


Set my mind at ease (or: further miscommunications and extended metaphors through skating)

by ineptshieldmaid



Series: Rain Down On Me [2]
Category: Yuri!!! on Ice (Anime)
Genre: (light or early stage bdsm), Anxiety, BDSM, Established Relationship, Kink Negotiation, M/M, Miscommunication, Relationship Negotiation, anxiety/panic DURING sex, extended metaphors about skating, i have a thing for viktor's thing for kneeling, meaningful relationship experiences with cooking, some mismatches of kink style, viktor nikiforov meets a baby, viktor's foot thing, weird anglophone rock music facts
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-03-14
Updated: 2017-03-17
Packaged: 2018-10-05 05:57:31
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 25,752
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10299146
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ineptshieldmaid/pseuds/ineptshieldmaid
Summary: ‘Yuri,’ Viktor says, putting his fork down. ‘I have to tell you something.’Yuri freezes. Then he puts his fork down and looks at Viktor, wide-eyed. ‘Okay.’‘I can’t cook.’‘Okay.’‘I can’t… do this to food!’ Viktor says, pointing at his chicken. ‘This is delicious and I have literally no idea how you did it.’‘I just…’ Yuri starts to speak, and Viktor speaks over him.‘I can heat up meat until it’s edible! I can calculate nutrients! But I can’t cook and I don’t know how and I…’ he swallows. ‘Never wanted to. Mostly I eat take-out and whatever they’re serving at the sports centre.’---Or: a longfic study in why dating someone in your highly competitive field is not, perhaps, the wisest of ideas. [Ed: yes, I changed over the summary. This quote is rather more representative.]





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Oh my goodness, people, this fic. I thought it might be about 5000 words, when I started it. I guessed 15 000 when I brought saraaah in to alpha-read bits. And here we are at 25 5000.
> 
> Many many thanks to saraaah for giving me alpha-reading reactions to work with, there wouldn't *be* a plot without those; and for SPaG checking.
> 
> Additional thanks to dance_across, for many conversations about Viktor Nikiforov's Feelings. And to fahye and her sister for technical advice on jump sequences and other matters of choreography.
> 
> Lastly: this is complete, but it will take a bit of time for chapters 2 and 3 to be beta'd. 
> 
> A-title from Guns 'N' Roses, 'Patience'; B-title once again descriptive. Series title from Crowded House, 'Fall At Your Feet'.
> 
> Further notes at the end.

When Viktor staggers off the ice after the free skate, hurting in places he’d forgotten he _could_ hurt, Yakov has to catch him and steady him. It’s not as if he’s out of shape, but he hasn’t had to push himself for nearly a year, and although his brain remembers - and he’s watched it in every millimetre of Yuri’s body - his body has forgotten that there’s a difference between working yourself to revel in what you _can_ do, and pushing yourself beyond that into the zone where can and can’t are forged together, sharp as a blade.

Viktor hasn’t hurt like this for almost a year. It’s overwhelming, where it used to be normal. And if he doesn’t scrape third, he won’t have to do it again for almost another year. 

Yakov passes him his skate guards, and Viktor steadies himself against the blocks to put them on. Halfway to the kiss and cry, a phone rings, and Viktor slaps the sleek sides of his costume - which of course, has no pockets, and consequently is not carrying his phone. Nor is his jacket.

Yakov rolls his eyes, pulls Viktor’s phone out of his own pocket, and answers it.

‘You saw,’ he says. And then, after a moment’s hesitation, ‘Could have been better.’

Viktor is reaching for the phone before Yakov has finished speaking, and before his conscious brain has finished figuring out that that must be Yuri - who else would be calling Viktor? Who else would Yakov be speaking to in English?

Yakov grunts and hands over the phone. Viktor abruptly realises he has no idea what to say, now. He knows what he says to _Yakov_ after he’s skated: not much. Generally he lists the things he knows he could have done better, which saves Yakov the bother of doing it. And then they wait.

And Viktor knows what he says to Yuri, after Yuri’s done skating - or he does now, after a few very wrong choices earlier in the season. He’d called Yuri during his Nationals, and told him exactly what Yuri needed to hear: that he was breathtaking, that Viktor had not torn his eyes away from the screen for a moment. And when Yuri had started listing all the things he’d done wrong, even before the scores were finalised, Viktor had sung ‘Can’t take my eyes off of you’, loudly and off-key, until Yuri had to laugh and shut up. They could talk about his performance later. 

The thing is, this time the list of things Viktor could have done better is longer than the time it will take to calculate the scores, and starts with ‘managing his retirement/not retirement coaching/fiancéing competing/dating plans with an ounce of common sense’ and moves on from there. And Yakov isn’t mentioning any of it, from Viktor’s poor life choices to his downgraded quad mid-program (a salchow, of all things. Viktor’s been landing quad sals since he was seventeen). And Yuri… 

Yuri is talking to him, Viktor realises, a little too late.

‘Viktor? Viktor, are you okay?’ 

‘Uh,’ Viktor says, and drops into the seat in the kiss and cry. ‘Okay. Yes.’ Yakov gives him a Look. It’s definitely a Look but Viktor has no idea what it’s supposed to communicate. ‘You watched?’ Part of him is incredibly glad, because it’s the next best thing to having Yuri with him. And part of him is incredibly glad because that means he doesn’t have to explain to Yuri what just happened, that he went out onto the ice and skated _just okay_ , for the first time in a very long time.

‘Viktor,’ Yuri laughs down the line at him, gently teasing. ‘I’m always watching. I’ve seen them all.’

He forgets, sometimes, just how long Yuri has loved him. It freaks him out, a little, even though he knows it’s not the same kind of love at all.

‘Yes, well,’ Viktor says. ‘Yakov’s right. Could have been better.’

Yuri, who can never muster this kind of humour for himself, laughs again. ‘Could have been worse, too,’ he says. ‘I saw your senior debut, remember?’

Oh, hell. Viktor hasn’t _forgotten_ about that, exactly. It just doesn’t matter very much, when you have five world championships to your name. He’d pushed to graduate into Seniors early, and Yakov had taken a gamble on him, the same as he had with Yuri Plisetsky. Except that, unlike Plisetsky, the gamble hadn’t paid off: Viktor had been all arms and legs and inflated ego, with none of the discipline that Lillia had somehow managed to drill into Yurio this season, and he had crashed and burned badly. First in the Grand Prix, and then at Nationals - the only time in his senior career (until, perhaps, right now) he’d failed to qualify for the Euros or Worlds.

‘And you kept watching me after that why, exactly?’ Viktor asks. He’s not fishing for compliments, but he’s happy to talk about anything other than the routine he just skated.

‘Well of course I did,’ Yuri says. ‘Duh. You were _hot_. You were a mess, but a hot one. A hot mess? That’s a term, isn’t it?’

Viktor has to laugh, because that’s exactly what he’d thought, the night he’d first met Yuri properly. _This man is why Americans invented the term ‘hot mess’_ , he’d thought. And then, rapidly on its heels, _emphasis on the hot_.

The scores go up while he’s still laughing, and it’s… it’s a decent score. For anyone else. 

Yuri must be thinking exactly the same thing, because what he says is, ‘If you say one word to the effect of _I should be better than that_ , I will never listen to your advice again.’ Which, Viktor has to concede, is fair. Yuri has posted scores lower than this in the last four months. Viktor’s currently holding second place, behind, uh, Martin, the young guy from Vladivostok. Viktor can’t even remember his last name, and he hates that. Both Yurio and Georgi are yet to skate: Yurio is practically guaranteed to surpass both Viktor and Martin, but if Viktor’s really lucky, he’ll come out just ahead of Georgi.

‘Viktor,’ Yuri asks, as Viktor gets up to clear out of the kiss and cry. ‘Are you staying around to watch the rest?’

Yes. Of course he is. He owes Yurio that much. ‘Yeah.’

‘Me too,’ Yuri says. ‘On the stream, I mean. If you want… I could stay on the phone as well.’

Viktor wonders, not for the first time, if there’s a physical limit to how much his heart can inflate just from Yuri offering him things. 

Two days later, after the exhibitions, Yuri calls him again. Viktor had - miraculously, because neither Yurio nor Georgi flubbed their quads - placed third, which means he’s going to Euros, which means he needs to fit in spending as much time as he can with Yakov alongside all the attention Yuri deserves before the Four Continents. Yakov had looked at him, and his bronze medal, and simply said ‘you should come back to Saint Petersburg’. But Viktor can’t. Well, he could. He could probably arrange to stay in Saint Petersburg for a few weeks, go back to Japan before the Euros and then work with Yuri until Four Continents, and then… then they both have Worlds. Fuck. He can’t think that far ahead. The point is, he hasn’t seen Yuri for weeks and he logically _could_ make that longer, but he can’t stand to even think of it.

So here he is, in a corner of the banquet, quietly freaking out. For once, everyone is occupied with someone other than him: Yurio and Martin-from-Vladivostok have started an argument at the other end of the room. Viktor thinks the argument started with ‘what will happen first: a ratified quad axel in men’s competition, or a quad of any sort in ladies’?’ Yurio, for reasons of his own, has taken the ladies’ side, and is currently trying to put money on Mila, specifically, landing a quad sal before Martin can land a quad axel. No one is paying any attention to Viktor, and Viktor isn’t paying much attention to anything, except to note that actually, the champagne supply is looking quite tempting.

It is at this point that Yuri calls him. Viktor picks up, and he’s short enough in his greeting that he can _hear_ Yuri flinching.

‘Are you busy? I can call back later,’ Yuri says. Viktor does the calculations, and it’s already late in Japan. Later will mean either tomorrow, or Yuri staying up until stupid hours of the morning.

‘It’s okay,’ he says. ‘I’m at the banquet, but no one’s bothering about me.’

‘Mmm,’ Yuri says. He sounds faintly amused. ‘Well, you can always look occupied with a drink in your hand.’

‘I’ve got a phone in my hand,’ Viktor points out.

‘Phone in one hand, drink in the other.’

Viktor has to laugh. ‘I’ve got a better idea,’ he says. ‘How about I fly home and then I have you in one hand and a drink in the other.’ He _means_ , when he says it, Yuri in one arm and a drink in his free hand, but as soon as the words are out he realises the connotations are slightly different, and can feel his face going red.

‘About that,’ Yuri says, and the bottom drops out of Viktor’s stomach. It’s not that he doesn’t _believe_ Yuri when Yuri says he would, actually, like to have sex with Viktor - again, more - and the only reason he hadn’t asked before was that he thought for some reason Viktor didn’t want to. It’s just… he can’t see Yuri’s face, can’t read his body language, and even over video chat it’s not the same. Viktor has this horrible feeling of miscalculation, like when he takes off into a jump and realises it’s not going to work out, that he has to either downgrade it or accept the fall. 

‘About… what?’ Viktor manages.

‘You, coming back to Japan.’ 

The bottom having already fallen out of Viktor’s stomach, he supposes the next feeling must be the middle falling out. He’ll have no stomach left at this rate. He revises his sense of doom from ‘I’m going to fuck up the sex thing somehow’ to ‘If Yuri breaks up with me I’ll never go back to Japan again and never see Hiroko-san and never learn to make katsudon and also Makkachin will never forgive me’.

‘Your flight is from Sochi, isn’t it?’ Yuri doesn’t sound angry. He sounds… hesitant. Which, Viktor thinks, is probably what Yuri would sound like breaking up with him. Yuri would know how much he was about to hurt Viktor, and dread landing that blow, even as he did it.

‘Yes.’

‘Can you change it for one to Saint Petersburg? Or one from Stockholm to Narita after the Euros...’

‘Yuri, slow down,’ Viktor says, because Yuri really is talking too fast now. ‘What are you talking about?’

‘I, um. I have a ticket to Saint Petersburg,’ Yuri says. ‘Viktor?’ He goes silent, and Viktor tries to scrape his mind - and his stomach - back together. ‘Viktor? You _said_ I could visit you.’

‘I did,’ Viktor says. Yuri had asked, and he’d said, and he… just hadn’t really thought about when, or really let himself expect it to work out. ‘Yes,’ he says, ‘yes, I can do that, that sounds great.’

‘Oh, thank goodness,’ Yuri says, ‘because I got an expedited visa, and Yakov helped me, and I think someone at the embassy would kill me if I had to change my plans again.’

* * *

It’s early evening when Yuri’s plane gets in. Viktor’s only been in Saint Petersburg for a day and a bit: long enough to warn his lodger that they have a guest incoming, and to realise his bedroom is a disaster zone, and that literally none of the food in the fridge is his, except for some cheese that probably hasn’t gone off yet, and a jar of mustard. There are nutrient bars and trashy cereals in the cupboard, but no milk. When he was living here properly there would have been a reasonable supply of salad greens and vegetables to put with them, and some kind of protein that’s easy to grill, but since leaving Hasetsu Viktor has been living off power shakes, take-out, and the actually quite reasonable lunch menu at the sports centre. This hasn’t bothered Viktor, but the thought of Yuri finding out - Yuri, who could be dining like a king on Hiroko’s cooking - makes him squirm.

He hasn’t got time, though. There’s practice; the aforementioned reasonable lunch; an awkward conversation with Yakov which involves the phrases ‘at least one of you has sense’ and ‘take tomorrow off’ and ‘if I so much as hear a whisper of you behaving inappropriately in, on, or around my rink…’ There’s trying to restore his room to a semblance of order, or at least make it look like a place he lives and not a place he shoves his stuff. And then he has to haul himself across town - by public transport, which is actually quicker than taking a taxi, or at least more reliable - to the airport to meet Yuri.

Yuri staggers out into the arrivals hall, blinking in confusion, and Viktor finds his breath all caught up. He had, apparently, forgotten how Yuri manages to combine devastatingly attractive and ridiculously adorable without being conscious of either. 

He also hadn’t quite calculated for how incredibly jet-lagged Yuri was going to be. It’s odd: the flight is long, but not _that_ long. Still, Yuri more or less falls into Viktor’s arms. It sounds very romantic, and it’s certainly extremely nice to have Yuri in his arms again, but Viktor does have to literally hold his fiancé up. Yuri squeezes Viktor around the middle, and then makes a valiant attempt to fall asleep standing up, using Viktor’s shoulder as a pillow. 

‘Okay, then,’ Viktor says, revising his plans for passionate reunion. ‘Let’s get you home and let you sleep.’ He starts manhandling Yuri, and his baggage (there’s only one case, which means Yuri must have brought almost nothing aside from his skating gear), toward the taxi rank. 

‘Hey,’ Yuri says, bumping up against Viktor. Viktor thinks that one might be on purpose, or maybe Yuri really is so tired he can’t walk straight. ‘You’re supposed to kiss me.’

‘Sorry,’ Viktor says, ‘I thought you were too tired.’

‘You thought wrong,’ Yuri says, and plants his feet squarely on the floor so that Viktor has to stop or leave him behind. Having successfully interrupted Viktor’s efforts to get them out of the airport, he grabs Viktor by the shirt and pulls him in, and Viktor really can’t complain about being obstructed by determined kissing.

Somewhere on the ride home Viktor realises he’s not actually _warned_ Yuri about Klementina, his lodger. He might have mentioned her over the summer, when Yuri asked what Viktor had done with his apartment and why he’d shipped so much stuff to Japan (answer: he’d had to clear out the spare room, which had been occupied mostly by old skating supplies, and somehow it seemed easier, although by no means cheaper, to take them all with him rather than decide what the hell to do with them). When he’s called Yuri it’s been from the rink in the middle of the day, because of the time difference, which has not only meant that he’s not been able to follow through on their deal vis-a-vis shirtless video calling, but also that he’s entirely forgotten to mention that, by the way, Yuri, there’s someone else living in my apartment these days.

Klementina, for her part, knows all about Yuri, because Viktor has approximately three topics of conversation aside from skating: his dog, his Yuri, and how much he enjoyed Japan. Klementina is a doctor and politely disinterested in skating except insofar as it causes some people weird physical health problems: consequently, in the time he’s been back, Viktor has talked a lot about Yuri, Makkachin, and Japan. He’s fairly sure he used to be a more interesting person, but he can’t remember what he talked about when he was.

Yuri, who Viktor knows is nervous around new people and loves privacy as much as he loves katsudon, takes the news of Klementina in his stride. For someone who’s so exhausted he can barely stand, speaking his second language to someone whose proficiency in said language is a lot worse than his, he survives the introductions remarkably well, and then falls headlong into Viktor’s bed.

‘I’m supposed to stay awake,’ he says, to the pillow. ‘Jet lag.’

Viktor reaches out and strokes his hair, and Yuri makes a pleased sort of humming sound. 

‘The flight really did you in, didn’t it?’ Viktor asks. ‘I don’t remember it being this bad when we flew in for the Rostelcom.’

‘I, um.’ Yuri pauses, then rolls over onto his back so he’s looking… not at Viktor, but at the ceiling above and behind Viktor’s head. ‘I didn’t sleep last night.’ There’s a beat, and then, ‘Not much the night before, either.’

Viktor isn’t sure whether to be touched or horrified that visiting him is more stress-inducing to Yuri than the expectation of competition. That could be a damning indictment of Viktor as a partner; a sign he was completely right not to beg Yuri to move here with him; or a weird sort of indicator that Yuri considers him important. He considers all three options and decides to kiss Yuri instead of figuring it out. Yuri tangles his arms around Viktor’s neck and kisses back. Viktor has missed Yuri’s kisses like a missing limb, and he thinks Yuri probably feels the same - he’s got text messages to that effect, at least - but Yuri is so tired that kissing rapidly turns into a messy mash of lips on lips, and then to breathing into each other’s space.

‘I should feed you,’ Viktor says. Then he remembers the kitchen. ‘But, um. I haven’t got food. I can order take-out?’

‘Just don’t ask me to choose,’ Yuri says. And then, hauling himself into a sitting position, ‘I should shower.’

Viktor sets Yuri up in the bathroom, politely does not stick around to ogle him getting undressed, and goes to order take-out. He orders Chinese, because he vaguely remembers Yuri mentioning having eaten a lot of that in Detroit, where all the local Japanese food tasted wrong to him somehow. Viktor knows Yuri does eat Russian food: he’d made a point of taking Yuri out to the nicest and yet most stereotypical restaurant he knew in Moscow. But it seems cruel to inflict Russian specialities on a jet-lagged man, and he has no idea what Yuri likes in pizza. Viktor has been eating tayaki and onigiri from a place halfway between home and the rink, more often than he wants to admit, but even he can tell they’re not a patch on Hiroko’s cooking. So Chinese it is.

He hears Yuri come out of the bathroom at the same time as the delivery guy turns up. By the time Viktor’s paid for the food and deposited it in the kitchen, he finds Yuri fast asleep, face-down on the bed again. This time he’s wearing only boxer shorts, and Viktor permits himself a decent period of ogling before dragging the covers out from under Yuri and then spreading them over him instead.

‘Sound asleep,’ Viktor says, to Klementina, who suppresses a smile. He scoops out half of everything - fried rice, sesame greens, kung pao chicken - onto a plate, and stashes the rest in the fridge. ‘Want a prawn cracker?’

Klementina accepts a prawn cracker. She accepts most of the prawn crackers, actually, which is fine, because Viktor doesn’t actually like prawn crackers.

* * *

Somewhere in the middle of the night, Viktor wakes up because Yuri is flopping around in the bed next to him like a dying fish. Viktor deals with this by flopping _on top_ of Yuri.

‘Thrashing around is my job,’ Viktor says, arranging himself so he can snuggle into Yuri’s chest and maybe go back to sleep. Yuri laughs, soft and warm. And then Yuri’s stomach rumbles, very loudly, and Viktor remembers that Yuri slept right through dinner.

‘There’s food,’ Viktor says. ‘In the fridge. Rice and stuff.’

Yuri kisses Viktor on the top of the head, then tips him sideways and gets up. He grabs Viktor’s bathrobe on the way to the kitchen, so Viktor, following him, makes do with wrapping himself in the duvet.

‘You could’ve stayed in bed,’ Yuri points out, pulling out the box of fried rice. He eyes the microwave for a second, then shrugs, snaps the take-out-chopsticks apart and starts eating it cold.

‘Or I could be with you,’ Viktor says, and Yuri’s cheeks go pink. He eats the fried rice and Viktor sits with his chin on his hand at the kitchen bench and tries not to fall asleep staring at him. He has a lot of things he should probably say to Yuri, and a different lot of things he probably _shouldn’t_ say (the first list starts with ‘I love you,’ and the second with ‘I love you but everything seems too much. I love you _and_ everything seems too much?’). He doesn’t say any of them. He lets Yuri nudge him off the bar stool when he’s done eating, and follows him back to bed.

They both know perfectly well that there’s absolutely no chance of them sleeping curled up together like nested spoons, because as soon as he falls asleep, Viktor will kick and sprawl and take up eighty percent of the space. This knowledge doesn’t stop Viktor from plastering himself up against every bit of Yuri’s body that he feasibly can, or Yuri from wrapping his arms around Viktor and clinging tight.

Viktor goes boneless, tucked up against Yuri’s side, and Yuri relaxes his grip in favour of stroking Viktor’s hair with one hand and gently palming Viktor’s ass with the other. Viktor giggles into Yuri’s skin, and thinks he could deal with falling asleep like this every night, halfway between petted and proprietarily owned.

‘I just really like your butt,’ Yuri says. A beat, and then, ‘And your hair.’

‘Good,’ Viktor says, and drags himself far enough into wakefulness to lean up and kiss Yuri for that. Tired or not, he hasn’t forgotten just how much he likes kissing Yuri, and it takes approximately two seconds for the tempo to go from sweet and sleepy to… well, still sweet, but a lot more awake and urgent. Yuri hauls him in closer, until Viktor is rubbing up against Yuri’s hip while Yuri gropes his ass. Viktor mumbles Yuri’s name into the kiss: not really an attempt at communication, just a litany of _Yuri, Yuri, Yuri_ , because Yuri’s here and Viktor missed him and everything is difficult and enormous but kissing Yuri seems vast enough to eclipse it all for a while.

‘Viktor,’ Yuri says, and that one _is_ an attempt at communication. Yuri pulls on Viktor’s hair until he stops trying to kiss Yuri for a minute. ‘Viktor, what-’ Yuri hesitates, swallows, tries again. ‘What do you want right now?’

‘You,’ Viktor says, promptly. ‘Just you.’ He sucks a kiss into Yuri’s neck. 

‘Yes, okay, you’ve got me,’ Yuri says, shaky. ‘But. Um. How?’

Some part of Viktor’s brain registers that he’s probably supposed to be more proactive in this situation. Or more polite. You’re supposed to talk about things, early on. (Not that _Viktor_ had ever wanted to, but the poor girl who had been the object of Viktor’s youthful attentions had tried, at least). Instead here he is, rutting up against Yuri’s hip, and the last thing in the world he can do right now is come up with a, a _choreography_ plan. He’s turned on, of course, and he has registered that Yuri is, too, but in some respects Viktor doesn’t even feel like he needs to get off, he just… wants to press himself into every square centimetre of Yuri’s skin and melt into him.

He must make some kind of movement, lurching forward to cover more of Yuri’s body with his, because Yuri grabs Viktor’s ass with both hands. 

‘How about this?’ Yuri says, and hauls Viktor over him, so he can knead Viktor’s ass and Viktor’s cock is pressed into his stomach. And Yuri’s into Viktor’s hip. And now Viktor really can sprawl all over Yuri, pressing him down and getting his hands all over Yuri’s sides, touching every bit of skin that isn’t already rubbing up against his. Yuri laughs, delighted, and uses his grip on Viktor’s ass to encourage him to grind down.

‘I missed you,’ Viktor manages, and then kisses Yuri rather than say anything more. 

None of it lasts very long: Yuri comes first, with a shudder that Viktor can feel right through his own body, and then he clings tightly to Viktor until Viktor follows. Viktor happily would stay like that, plastered up against Yuri’s skin with cooling sweat and spunk, and worry about regretting it in the morning. Yuri has more sense, and finds one of Viktor’s old t-shirts to wipe them down with.

* * *

‘What should I season this with?’ Yuri asks. He’s got the chicken fillets they bought earlier that day, and has been thumping them with a mallet which must be Klementina’s - Viktor has certainly never equipped his kitchen with a hammer especially for beating up meat. Viktor had had half-formed fuzzy ideas of banishing Yuri (somehow) and serving up… well, boring food, because Vikor can’t really cook anything beyond grilled meat and salad. But he’s been incubating the idea of putting food in front of Yuri, looking after him, and it’s starting to make him wish he _did_ know interesting recipes.

Instead what happened was Yuri went with him to the grocery store, and he had the pleasure of noticing how Yuri tried not to reveal his fascination with all the packets and ingredients and signs he couldn’t read or recognise. Lunch had been easy enough: bread, cold meats, fruit. Viktor had had the feeling, when they went down to the sports centre to use the gym for the afternoon (late December in Saint Petersburg is too cold to be running out of doors), that he was doing pretty well at having a functional life to invite his fiancé into.

And now here he is, washing up the dishes they left from lunch, and Yuri - who had responded to Viktor’s suggestion that he chill out and let Viktor handle dinner by echoing back _or I could be with you_ \- is asking him about seasoning chicken.

‘Season?’ Viktor asks, buying time. To make things worse, Klementina is sitting at the table on the far side of the kitchen bench, reading some sort of magazine for doctors and doing a good job of pretending not to listen.

‘Yeah, I mean… flavour?’ Yuri seems to think he doesn’t recognise the word ‘season’. Maybe Viktor can convince him no one in Russia seasons things? Except that would be an obvious lie. ‘I mean, probably you don’t use soy sauce all the time here, what do you have instead?’

‘Uh… pepper?’ 

Yuri shrugs. ‘Okay, where is it?’

The top left cupboard has what passes for Viktor’s staples in it. He peels off the dish gloves and goes to look. There’s a lot of cereal, which, now that he thinks about it, is probably going stale. Some oil: that’s a start. Salt, also good. Rice, which is not an achievement because they bought that only this afternoon. Aha: pepper. He pulls out a shaker and dusts some spiderwebs off the bottom of it.

Yuri shakes a bit of ground pepper into his palm, frowns, and reaches past Viktor to grab the canola oil.

‘Pity we didn’t buy a lemon,’ he says, and pours the oil into a small bowl. 

‘A… lemon.’ Viktor considers this. ‘I could go and _get_ you a lemon?’ He would. He would absolutely go out and get Yuri a lemon.

Yuri goes pink. ‘Oh, no! We can - I’m sure this is fine.’

‘I have lemon juice in the fridge,’ Klementina says, giving up her pretense of not listening. ‘If you look in the cupboard below you, Yuri, there are dried herbs, too.’

Yuri looks at her, a little startled. 

‘You can use them,’ she adds. ‘If you want.’

‘Thank you,’ Yuri says. He hesitates. ‘Would you like to have dinner with us? We have enough, don’t we, Viktor?’ 

They probably do. Especially if they cook the rice or something to go with the salad. Viktor cringes, because Klementina is, from what he’s seen, a _very good_ cook. ‘Sure,’ he says.

Klementina smiles at him a little, and even more at Yuri. Yuri’s only been here for twenty-four hours and he’s already her favourite person in the apartment. Viktor she likes well enough, or at least humours because his early return to Russia means he’s cut her rent in half, but Yuri she’s evidently charmed by. This is fine by Viktor: as far as he’s concerned, anyone not utterly charmed by Yuri needs their eyes, ears and probably brain checked.

‘Thanks,’ she says. ‘But I’m going out for dinner. With, um, my girlfriend.’

‘Oh!’ Yuri’s face lights up. ‘That’s nice!’

‘I didn’t know you had a girlfriend,’ Viktor says, feeling a little betrayed. All the time he’s spent rhapsodising about Yuri, and Klementina never felt the need to say ‘By the way, I’m in love with someone too’.

‘You never asked,’ Klementina says, giving him an odd look. ‘I thought you knew. I’m not home every night.’

‘I thought you were… at the hospital!’

‘I’m a family doctor, Viktor. I don’t work at the hospital.’

‘I probably knew that,’ Viktor concedes. ‘Did I know that?’ Klementina nods. ‘Sorry. I’m… terrible,’ Viktor says, making a vague hand gesture that he hopes encompasses all his terriblenesses in one. ‘Just generally, terrible.’

‘He is,’ Yuri says, from the fridge. He emerges with a plastic squeezy bottle of lemon juice. Well, at least Yuri’s realistic about Viktor’s personality flaws.

Then Viktor thinks of something else. ‘You… you know you could bring your girlfriend here, right?’ he says, to Klementina. ‘I wouldn’t mind.’

‘I presumed not,’ Klementina says, in Russian, ‘especially since your boyfriend turns up on short notice.’

‘Fiancé,’ Viktor corrects, still in Russian. Yuri is ignoring them and putting dried herbs into the bowl with the oil and the lemon juice. Viktor is uncomfortably aware that he’s been calling Yuri his fiancé in Russian, in his head, but has not in fact tried the word out in English. Doesn’t even know the equivalent term in Japanese, or if Yuri is using it in his head.

‘Whatever,’ Klementina says. ‘That’s not why, anyway,’ she says. ‘Olga has a daughter, it’s easier if I visit them.’

‘Huh,’ Viktor says. ‘Okay. Cool.’ He turns to pull the plug out of the sink, which he’d left full when the search for seasoning interrupted the tail end of his dish-washing.

‘Tell your girlfriend we said hi,’ Yuri says. He’s missed the entire last part of the conversation, but is somehow still better at ending it gracefully than Viktor is. If Viktor didn’t love him so much, he might actually hate him.

Yuri grills the chicken; Viktor assembles a salad (he bought a bagged salad mix with dressing included: limited chance of failure). Yuri diagnoses the meal as lacking in carbs, and fishes out the bread left from lunch, puts the remainder of the herb-lemon-and-oil mix on it, and does something with the oven that results in toasty lemony herb bread. Viktor tries to pretend he knew his oven could do that.

It is, without a doubt, the most amazing meal Viktor has ever been involved in preparing. Or at least, the most amazing since he was a small child. Elite sports boarding school had not been big on the culinary arts, but he vaguely remembers cooking with his grandmother on special occasions when he was a kid.

Yuri eats this amazing meal quietly and with composure, like it’s unremarkable. Because it is, to him. Because he is a functional adult who shovels snow and helps his mother in the inn kitchen and has actual skills outside of his capacity to jump in the air and spin around and land back on the ice and make it look elegant.

‘Yuri,’ Viktor says, putting his fork down. ‘I have to tell you something.’

Yuri freezes. Then he puts his fork down and looks at Viktor, wide-eyed. ‘Okay.’

‘I can’t cook.’ 

‘Okay.’

‘I can’t… do this to food!’ Viktor says, pointing at his chicken. ‘This is delicious and I have literally no idea how you did it.’

‘I just…’ Yuri starts to speak, and Viktor speaks over him.

‘I can heat up meat until it’s edible! I can calculate nutrients! But I can’t _cook_ and I don’t know how and I…’ he swallows. ‘Never wanted to. Mostly I eat take-out and whatever they’re serving at the sports centre.’

‘Okay…’ Yuri tilts his head a little. ‘Okay. Good to know?’ There’s a moment’s silence. ‘You don’t have to cook,’ Yuri says. ‘I can cook. I’m not great at it but it’s…’ he pauses, in that way he does when he’s trying to find the words. ‘It’s sort of… I find it soothing. Especially when I’m not at home.’

‘I don’t… you can’t come to my house and do all my cooking,’ Viktor says. ‘That’s not fair.’

Yuri gives him a considering look for a moment. ‘I hate ordering in restaurants,’ he says.

‘What?’

‘I hate it! I decide what I want and as soon as the waiter asks me I forget. Or it seems… silly.’

‘Silly? How could choosing food be silly?’

Yuri rubs his forehead. ‘I know it _isn’t_ ,’ he says. ‘I chose from their menu! If they have silly food on it that’s their own fault! But I always feel like I made a silly choice.’ He bites his lip in that utterly adorable way that makes Viktor want to kiss him forever. But then, Viktor always wants to kiss him forever. ‘That one’s probably worse in foreign countries,’ Yuri admits. ‘Especially America. It was like…. Oh, the Asian guy’s ordered rice again. Or if I was eating Asian, what if I _wanted_ honey chicken or one of those Chinese-American dishes people laugh about?’

Viktor gives up trying to figure out what this has to do with Viktor’s cooking, and tries to follow the logic.

‘I don’t think,’ he says, ‘I don’t think anyone cares that much about what you order.’

‘I know!’ Yuri says, and he’s frustrated now, his gestures jerky. ‘But I think they might!’

‘Huh,’ Viktor says. ‘That, uh. That must be hard.’

‘ _You’re_ good at restaurants,’ Yuri says, pointing a finger at him almost accusatorily. ‘Even in Japan when you first got there! You were good at restaurants! Even when you can’t read the menu you’re good at ordering food!’

‘I, uh.’ Viktor has never really considered this a remarkable skill. ‘I travel a lot?’ he says.

‘So do I,’ Yuri says. ‘And I still hate restaurants.’

They sit in silence for a few moments. Viktor has a feeling he’s learned something very important, but has no idea what to do with this information.

‘Anyway,’ Yuri says, visibly calming himself down and focusing back on his dinner. ‘I like cooking, you don’t. You like restaurants, I don’t.’

‘Huh,’ Viktor says. ‘That’s… a problem.’ He feels a little disappointed at this revelation of incompatibility. It’s not even a big deal, compared to some of the other hurdles he and Yuri have overcome. But he really likes eating out.

‘Problem?’ Yuri asks. ‘It’s fantastic! I’m saying, Viktor, that I can cook and you can order food in restaurants! With our powers combined we can find nourishment in any circumstances!’

‘Wait. Is that why you always let me order for you during competitions?’

‘Yes,’ Yuri says, like that should have been obvious.

‘I thought that was because… I’m your coach.’

Yuri gives him a look that says Viktor has been particularly stupid. ‘Does anyone else’s coach order for them in public?’

‘Yakov gives us meal plans,’ Viktor says. ‘I never… wrote one up for you.’

‘I could draw up a training meal plan in my _sleep_ ,’ Yuri says. ‘That’s not the same thing.’

‘Okay,’ Viktor says. It’s not like he _objects_ to ordering for Yuri. ‘Okay. I order food and you cook. That works.’ The part of his brain that enjoys thinking up things he could do for Yuri offers up the vision of them in some very fancy restaurant, Viktor ordering food Yuri’s never eaten before and holding out bites of each dish on a fork for Yuri to try. Well. That’s certainly an idea.

Something still feels slightly wrong, but he can’t put his finger on what it is.

‘Eat your chicken,’ Yuri says. Viktor turns his attention back to it, and it’s delicious. Then there’s the salad, which Viktor didn’t cook so much as arrange. It has some kind of lettuce and bean sprouts and other… things in it. Yuri seems to be enjoying it, anyway. Viktor normally would - it’s one he’s bought plenty of times before - but it’s dwarfed tonight by the utter amazingness of lightly seasoned chicken.

It’s not until they’ve cleared the table and are cleaning up the kitchen that Viktor figures out what’s slightly wrong. Yuri’s washing up, and Viktor’s drying. Every time Viktor moves around to put something away, he bumps up against Yuri when he comes back. The kitchen’s not that big. They’d bumped into each other a lot trying to get dinner made and put onto plates, too.

‘Yuri?’ Viktor asks. The thought hasn’t quite finished forming yet but it’s definitely a question.

‘Mmm?’

‘If you’re going to cook,’ Viktor says, ‘can I help? Sometimes?’ 

Yuri stops, hands still in the sudsy sink, and looks at him.

‘I don’t…’ Viktor wraps his arms around Yuri’s waist from behind, which is mostly because he really wants to and partly because that way he doesn’t have to look into Yuri’s eyes. ‘I don’t know much about cooking but I might like it. With you.’

Yuri slithers around in Viktor’s grasp and kisses the daylights out of him. This gets dish suds all in Viktor’s hair, because Yuri is still wearing the rubber gloves and the rubber gloves are covered in foam. Viktor does not care one little bit.

* * *

Yakov has assigned them rink time, but - in deference to everyone else’s schedules - it’s really weird rink time. They spend the hour in the morning that would normally be Viktor’s solo practice hour on Yuri’s free program. There were ragged edges and slightly-turned-out landings when he skated it at Nationals: Viktor can’t help feeling that that’s his own fault, that the weight of his gaze would make the difference. But there’s nothing to be done about that, and this sort of thing is going to keep happening, if they go on like this.

Viktor has a hour with Yakov in the late afternoon, and then there’s another hour and a half in the evening for him and Yuri to use as they please. Well. Not _any_ way they please. Viktor has already been sternly instructed by Yakov, and yelled at by Yurio, about things they are not to do in the rink. Georgi, more worryingly, had advised him to choose something that required minimal clothes-removal, because dropping someone bare ass first onto the ice tends to kill the mood. _Mila_ had intimated that Viktor was probably better at pair lifts than Georgi and so this wasn’t a concern. It had been, all round, a very disturbing conversation.

Yuri mutters something about going to the gym while Viktor works with Yakov, but Viktor grabs his wrist. ‘Stay,’ he says. ‘I want to show you.’

Yuri looks to Yakov for confirmation, and Yakov merely grunts, like he’d expected this.

‘It’s not…’ Viktor hesitates at the edge of the ice. ‘This is just a draft.’

‘Get on with it, boy,’ Yakov says, and Viktor goes out and skates. 

When he’s done, they’re both watching him. Yakov… Viktor actually has no idea what Yakov thinks. He’d wanted Viktor back on the ice, but is certainly not best pleased with the conditions under which he’d got him. But he’s not pushing: he’s humouring Viktor, or maybe testing him. He could be waiting to see what happens first, Viktor breaking under the strain or Viktor coming begging to Yakov for more. More input, more challenge, more… anything.

‘That’s not the program you skated at Nationals,’ Yuri says. Viktor resists the urge to snark at him for stating the bleeding obvious. The short program he’d skated at Nationals was an old one, polished up a bit and back-loaded with an extra quad in the second half. There would be nothing stopping him using it for the rest of the season, but it feels old, tired.

‘The music for this only came through a few days before Nationals,’ Viktor says. He leans on the wall, near enough to Yuri to touch, but not actually touching him. ‘I pay my musicians well, but not well enough to magic up recordings out of nowhere.’

‘It’s original?’ Yuri asks. Yakov still isn’t saying anything.

Viktor shakes his head. ‘A cover.’ Svetlana had outdone herself this time - as well as the piano he’d asked for, she’d found someone with a harp, and transformed a roomy, pensive rock track into something airy and heartfelt and utterly perfect. 

Yakov has seen the choreography before - once, two days ago. Viktor’s changed up the combinations, and the step sequences are still subject to revision. He looks to his coach for… something. An opinion. The quad-double should have stayed a triple-triple. The rink-long cantilever is laying it on a bit thick. 

Yakov stares at him for a moment, and then says, flatly, ‘And you think you can win with this. With less than a month’s preparation.’

The thing is, Viktor _doesn’t_ think he can win. Even if he reused last year’s programs exactly, he’s under-prepared and Plisetsky is phenomenal. _Agape_ was, as Viktor had promised him, a program Viktor could win with, but Yurio has taken it and made it his own: he’s _better_ now than Viktor. Yakov knows this. Yakov has coached Yurio through that transformation.

‘I want to try,’ Viktor says. He feels himself squirm a little under Yakov’s gaze. He hasn’t said that since the season they fought over Viktor’s determination to commission and choreograph his own piece. Since then it’s not been ‘I want to’ and ‘I’ll try’, but ‘I will’ and ‘I’m going to’. Even the quad flip. I’m going to add a quad flip this season, Yakov. If you don’t have it down perfect before your first competition you’re swapping it for a toe loop, Viktor. I won’t have to, Yakov.

‘You think you can have this polished in time for the Euros?’ Yakov asks.

That, Viktor can swear to, but Yuri gets there first.

‘Of course he can,’ Yuri says, eyes shining. ‘Viktor. I love it. It’s…’ He touches his chest, a little self-consciously. ‘It’s full of feeling,’ he says, quietly. That’s what Viktor wanted: he thinks if they were alone, Yuri might have said more. He’s sketched out a feeling on ice, and Yuri can read it.

‘Oh, it’s very meaningful,’ Yakov growls. He had rolled his eyes so hard it’s a wonder he didn’t sprain them, when Viktor brought him the track. Of course _he_ knows the song, and the lyrics, which Yuri doesn’t. Viktor got his weirdly eclectic taste in Anglophone rock music from somewhere, and it sure as hell wasn’t post-Soviet pop radio of the early 2000s. Yakov had actually suggested this one as an exhibition program, when Viktor was about nineteen. Viktor had gone for something he had deemed more manly and assertive. ‘The question is,’ Yakov continues, ‘will it be good enough?’

Viktor straightens his spine. Here’s the challenge. ‘It will,’ he promises.

‘Make the quad-double a quad-triple,’ Yakov says. ‘And the cantilever is a bit much, don’t you think?’

Viktor is tempted to announce he’s putting the quad flip into a combination, but he bites his tongue. He’s only tried that a few times on his own, with mixed success. He’d been planning to perfect it and then see if Yuri could match him.

‘The cantilever stays,’ he says, instead. Yuri’s eyes are tracking back and forth from Yakov to Viktor, and he’s… quiet. Yuri’s usually quiet, but Viktor is fairly certain this is the bad kind of quiet. ‘Yuri liked it, right?’

Of course Yuri liked it. If Yuri didn’t like it, Viktor might have to dig a pit and fling himself into it. 

Yuri looks at Yakov again, and then at the floor. ‘I liked it,’ he says. And then, rapidly, ‘I’m going down to the gym now.’

Viktor reaches out to grab his hand. Yuri squeezes it, and meets his eyes. ‘You’ve got your hour with Yakov, Viktor, use it to work with him. I’ll see you later, okay?’

Viktor and Yakov watch him go. Viktor feels uneasy, but Yakov looks sort of impressed. ‘I like that boy,’ he says, and Viktor blinks at him in bafflement. ‘He has sense,’ Yakov declares, not for the first time. ‘And he’s not a bad skater.’

‘He’s brilliant,’ Viktor says, without hesitation.

‘Yes, well. So are you, or you used to be.’

Viktor grips the boards, knuckles whitening. ‘Yakov. Everything I’ve done this season has been ridiculous.’

‘Correct.’

‘Which makes it a great time to take risks,’ Viktor goes on. ‘Whatever I do for the rest of this season, it’s going to be remembered as the season I decided to try coaching and competing at once. I might as well take chances with… the choreography and so on.’

‘Whatever you do for the rest of this season,’ Yakov says, ‘it’s going to be all about you. Whoever wins at the Euros, or Worlds, they’re going to be winning _over you_. If you fail to medal, everyone will talk about you, and your stupid choices, and your star-crossed love affair, and whatever else.’

This is not untrue. That’s sort of Viktor’s point: he’s going to be gossiped about anyway, he might as well skate a program he really _feels_.

‘Plisetsky’s going to spend this season in your shadow, even if you skate like a drunken toddler,’ Yakov says, staring him down. ‘Georgi, too. Even your young man there.’

Oh. Viktor hadn’t really thought about it like that.

‘And let us not speak of the small matter of _my reputation_ ,’ Yakov continues. ‘So. If you’re going to stick around, you better make it worth _everyone’s_ while.’

Viktor lets go of the wall. ‘Got it,’ he says. ‘Where do we start?’


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which boundaries are negotiated, Yurio uses an analogy, and Viktor Nikiforov meets a baby.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Continuing love to saraaah for alpha & beta-reading.

It takes about four days before Yuri and Viktor end up in a proper fight. Their schedule is weird: between morning and evening practice and Viktor’s time with Yakov, they end up spending more time at the sports centre than at home. They’re around Viktor’s rink-mates some of the time: Viktor thinks Yurio resents them, but when he says as much to Yuri, Yuri says he and Yurio get along well these days. Apparently while Viktor’s working with Yakov, Yurio has taken to dragging Yuri with him into the ballet studio, where the two of them are happily bending themselves into knots while Viktor is making his feet bleed and his knees ache. Viktor has no problem with Yuri’s flexibility - except insofar as he has no _time_ to exploit it in any of the ways he’d like - but that means it’s just him Yurio is pissed with. Great. 

Viktor’s programs are coming together - he adds a sequence of triples in the second half of the free, and mentally marks it as a spot where he can substitute in that quad flip sequence, if he ever masters it. He just doesn’t have enough time. He should be spending more of that free evening slot on his own work - Yuri urges him to, every night - but he finds himself choked. 

‘You’ve got this,’ Yuri says to him, when he falls on the quad-triple. ‘It’s going to be amazing.’ His eyes shine and he absolutely believes it, and Viktor knows he should be buoyed up by that. He is, sort of. He choreographed this with Yuri in mind, forcing his body into shapes that say _I would lay everything down at your feet_ : of course he’s happy Yuri sees what he’s doing and believes in it.

And yet. He finds himself with two utterly contradictory desires. On the one hand, he is immensely glad Yuri is here with him, in his flat, cooking with him and kissing him and sharing messy handjobs in the shower with him. He wants, very much, to maximise the time they spend together, here or in Japan, and is thinking seriously about completely scrapping the ‘I fly in alone to Russia for intensive work’ plan. Yakov likes Yuri. They’re paying fees for extra rink time. They can fly in and out _together_. On the other hand, he desperately wishes Yuri weren’t here every day, watching his program come together. He wants to send Yuri away, or go away himself, and do nothing but skate for weeks until he can come back with a perfect piece to set out before Yuri. And, he supposes, the Euro judges. Who will probably deem it a disappointment, especially with Yurio on the same ice skating a routine that everyone knows Viktor also choreographed.

If it’s going to be a disaster, Viktor thinks, he wishes Yuri didn’t have to see it as a disaster in progress. Any novelty value the routine has will be gone by the time they get to Stockholm.

‘I am so glad to be here, with you,’ Yuri says, on the third day, pressing Viktor into the rink wall and kissing him. ‘I’m so glad you agreed to return.’ He kisses Viktor again. ‘Thank you.’

How can Viktor deny him anything?

On the fourth day, they fight. They’re in the kitchen, again - they’ve swapped their evening rink time for Mila’s morning one, so she could go to a concert yesterday. Yuri, true to his word, is cooking. Viktor is helping, mostly by stirring the hot pan, in which strips of chicken are happily sizzling.

‘Okay now you take the meat out, and put it aside, and reheat the pan for the vegetables,’ Yuri says. He’s wielding a chopping knife with great dexterity, and Viktor finds it weirdly attractive. Competence with knives: not something he’d have called a turn-on, before. 

Yuri turns around with the tray of vegetables, and clucks. ‘You’re supposed to put paper towel down before you turn the meat out,’ he says. ‘Soak up excess oil.’

‘Oh.’ Viktor looks at the plate of meat, which looks fine to him. ‘I don’t know if I have paper towel.’ 

‘Klementina will,’ Yuri says, resigned. Viktor feels squirmy with something like disappointment, and presses himself close to Yuri. He kisses Yuri’s neck, and gets shrugged off for his troubles. Well, fair enough, Viktor thinks, Yuri is in the middle of transferring vegetables into a spitting hot frying pan. Viktor waits until he’s finished, takes the wooden spoon off him, and hip-checks him gently as he takes over stirring. Yuri jumps half a foot.

‘Can you _stop_!’

‘Stop… what?’ Viktor asks.

‘I can’t move without you bumping into me!’ Yuri says, retreating to the other side of the kitchen. 

‘Oh. Okay.’ Viktor doesn’t know what to make of this. He’s _always_ touched Yuri, ever since he moved to Japan. At first Yuri was skittish, but not like this. That was nerves and fear. This is… more hostile. ‘Sorry. The kitchen’s small.’

‘Your apartment's small,’ Yuri says.

‘Well, we can’t all have an entire inn at our disposal!’ Viktor snaps back at him.

‘That’s not what I meant!’ 

Viktor reigns his temper in, because he is not Yuri Plisetsky and he’s got some sense of self-restraint. ‘Okay. What do I do with this… vegetable thing?’

‘Give me a minute.’ Yuri mixes up some kind of sauce thing in a bowl, and instructs Viktor to evict the vegetables in turn from the pan. Viktor had no idea that cooking involved so much time spent taking things _out_ of cooking vessels. ‘Let me do this,’ Yuri says, and Viktor stands back while he pours the sauce into the pan and stirs it until he’s satisfied with it in some mysterious way, then puts all the vegetables and the meat back in the pan with it. Viktor stays a considerate foot away from him the whole time.

This détente continues through dinner, where they calmly discuss the rest of the season - the Euros, who will be at them who wasn’t at the GPF, and likewise for the Four Continents - and their plans for the weekend, which involve taking Yurio out to dinner. Viktor is slightly dreading it: Yurio has been nothing but hostile to him since he got back, but Yuri insists. Yuri, uncharacteristically, leaves Viktor to clean up after dinner, and goes to shower. They putter through their evening routine, exactly as usual except Viktor spends it realising how much of his time he normally spends touching Yuri.

They climb into bed on opposite sides and do not touch each other. Viktor debates flinging himself out of bed and onto the floor and begging for forgiveness, except he can’t see what he actually did wrong.

‘This is a stupid fight,’ Yuri says, after about ten minutes of this lying in bed and pretending everything’s normal.

‘Are we fighting?’ Viktor asks. ‘I’m not fighting.’

‘What do you call this, then?’ Yuri asks, gesturing to the careful foot-and-a-half distance between them.

‘You asked me not to touch you!’

‘I was annoyed with you climbing all over me while I’m dealing with a hot stove!’ Yuri covers his face with his hands. ‘Oh, fuck, Viktor, I’m sorry, I just… I’m sorry.’

‘I’m sorry,’ Viktor says. Somehow he’s upset Yuri _more_ by not touching him. This is the worst. ‘I didn’t mean…’ he swallows. ‘Do I climb all over you?’

Yuri peeks out at him. ‘Yes,’ he says. ‘You really do.’

‘Oh.’ Viktor considers the possibility that he’s been annoying Yuri, to a greater or lesser degree, the whole time he’s known him. It’s not a pleasant consideration.

‘Oh, fucking hell,’ Yuri says, and sits up. ‘Fuck fuck fucking _bloody nonsense hell_.’ He adds a string of extra swear-words on the end in Japanese. Viktor stares at him in absolute bafflement. He’s seen Yuri collapse in on himself before, and crack open, but a fountain of frustrated swearing is a new one.

‘Okay,’ Yuri says, gathering himself together again. ‘Here’s the thing. Ninety-five percent of the time, I like you climbing all over me. It’s nice.’

‘But not today,’ Viktor says. ‘Can you… tell me why?’ Possibly if he knows why, he can know when not to touch Yuri.

‘Aargh,’ Yuri says. ‘No. Yes. There’s no _reason_.’

‘Great.’ Viktor tries not to sound bitter, but utterly fails.

Yuri clenches his hands into fists, and then says, all in a rush, ‘Viktor, can you maybe… can I have the morning hour tomorrow to myself?’

‘At the rink?’ Viktor asks, just to check.

‘Yes.’ Yuri stares at his hands. ‘I know we’ve been using that hour to work on my program, but it’s good, it doesn’t need two of us _every day_. If you were here and I was in Japan I’d be working on my own.’

Viktor feels like a horse has kicked him in the gut. ‘Okay,’ he says. And then, because he can’t not ask, ‘What have I done wrong?’

‘Nothing,’ Yuri says, quickly. ‘It’s my problem. I just… there are always _people_ here. In the gym and the studio and you’re with me at the rink and then we’re always together and I just…’

‘We’ve been always together since I moved to Japan,’ Viktor says. He’s trying not to be hurt by this, but it’s hard not to be.

‘No,’ Yuri says. ‘We haven’t. I go running on my own, and I work out with Takeshi and you take Makkachin for walks without me. I go down to the rink on my own, or to the studio. _You_ go to the rink on your own.’

‘Oh.’ Viktor thinks about that. It’s true, he realises. He only feels like he and Yuri have been together all the time because he knows no one else in Hasetsu as well as he does Yuri, and because he spends most of his free time _thinking_ about Yuri.

‘I love you,’ Yuri says. ‘It’s just… I haven’t been alone since I got here. Except in the shower, and sometimes not even then!’

‘Oh.’ Viktor had wondered about the shower thing, in terms of whether Yuri would find that hot or weird or somehow unhygienic. He hadn’t thought about whether Yuri needed the time alone. 

Yuri touches Viktor’s face, nudging his chin so he looks up. Yuri is smirking at him a little. ‘The shower sex, for the record, was great.’

‘Good,’ Viktor says. ‘That’s… good.’ He relaxes a little. ‘Okay. You can have tomorrow morning to yourself. And any other morning you want,’ he adds.

‘Thank you.’ Yuri wriggles back down into the bed, and holds out one arm. ‘Come here.’

Viktor goes. Yuri has to coax him a bit to convince him to snuggle up properly, but when he does, it’s with immense relief. 

‘We could alternate,’ Yuri says. ‘The morning slot. Split the evening between my program and yours, together, and keep the mornings separate.’ 

Viktor thinks about Yuri watching him work on his program, about all the ways that’s both lovely and terrifying. ‘Yes,’ he says, and can’t find words for how much better this arrangement sounds. ‘Yes, let’s do that.’

Yuri strokes Viktor’s hair, and Viktor melts into him. Moments pass, and then Viktor’s brain picks up something out of the conversation that means he has to lean up and kiss Yuri, cradle Yuri’s face in his hands and kiss him like it might be his last chance.

‘What was that for?’ Yuri gasps, when Viktor lets him go.

‘You love me!’

Yuri stares at him. ‘Well, _yes_.’ Viktor feels his face heat up. ‘Wait, Viktor, did you not know? How the hell?’

‘No, I,’ Viktor kisses the side of Yuri’s face. ‘I got the idea.’

‘You _got the idea_!’

‘Well, you never _said_.’ Viktor puts one hand over Yuri’s mouth when Yuri protests. ‘Except on television, which doesn’t count, because I wasn’t in the _room_ and also I _don’t speak Japanese_ and you’re extremely lucky Minako was translating for me because the transcript they put out in English was somewhat deficient!’

‘But you knew, right?’ Yuri asks.

Viktor has to smile, and kisses him again. ‘Yes. But it’s nice to be told.’

Yuri rolls him flat onto his back. ‘Is it?’ he asks. ‘I _wouldn’t know_.’

Viktor is too busy enjoying the sensation of being pinned down, for a few seconds, to catch on. Then he feels a gap open up in his chest.

‘Oh.’

Yuri picks up Viktor’s hands, one in each of his, and plants them on the pillow beside Viktor’s head. ‘I love you, Viktor,’ he says, smirking. ‘I looooove you.’

‘Good,’ Viktor manages. He’s not sure how they went from fighting to I-love-you so fast, or why the latter involves Yuri holding him down, but he’s completely into it. So into it it’s hard not to buck up into the weight of Yuri’s hips.

‘Have you got something to tell me, Viktor?’ Yuri aks.

The stupid thing is, Viktor has not, historically, been a person who has any problem declaring love for people. If there’s been a problem, it’s been that he reaches habitual ‘love you lots!’ levels of greeting and farewell _before_ getting into an Actual Relationship with someone, leading to great confusion and awkwardness in the early stages of dating. But with Yuri, well. He’s spent so long not _saying_ and finding every other way he possibly can to make it obvious, that he can’t quite make his tongue go.

‘Viktor Nikiforov,’ Yuri says, and he’s not trying to make this easy: he shifts his hips against Viktor’s cock, making him shudder and whine. ‘I love you.’ And then he giggles, and adds, ‘Oh, this is fun, I’m going to do it _all the time_.’ 

Viktor has no idea if Yuri means declaring love, or holding him down, but that does it: he’s grinning back up at him. ‘I love you too,’ he says, it turns into laughter in his throat. ‘So much! Oh my Yuri, you have no idea how much.’ 

‘You have no idea how much I love _you_ ,’ Yuri says, like it’s some kind of challenge. He leans down and sucks a kiss into Viktor’s neck that is definitely going to bruise. ‘Hey,’ he says, all bright and glowing, so that Viktor is utterly unprepared for what comes next. ‘Can I blow you?’

‘You. What?’

Some of the mirth drains out of Yuri’s face, and he bites his lip. ‘Not if you don’t want me to,’ he says, ‘of course. And I… haven’t done it before, I might be terrible.’ He lets go of Viktor’s wrists, and Viktor reaches up for him with his freed hands.

‘Of course you can,’ Viktor tells him, tugging him down into something resembling a hug. He kisses the side of Yuri’s neck ( _not_ hard enough to bruise). ‘I just… I was surprised. That wasn’t where I thought tonight was going to go.’

‘You never do, though,’ Yuri says, pulling back far enough to look at Viktor. ‘This is like how you thought I didn’t want to have sex with you, isn’t it? You were waiting for me to ask. This is me, asking!’

‘To be fair,’ Viktor says, ‘you thought _I_ didn’t want to have sex with you either.’

‘Okay,’ Yuri says, ‘we both suck. We totally suck. Can I try sucking you off instead of just sucking in general?’

This is the least sexy seduction Viktor has ever been subject to, and yet he thinks it might make his heart expand by two orders of magnitude. ‘Be my guest,’ he says.

* * *

Dinner with Yurio works out okay, except for the part where the waiter mistakes Yurio for Viktor’s son. Granted, he hasn’t has his growth spurt yet, still looks less than his fifteen years, but Viktor is still horrified that anyone could mistake him for the parent of a teenager. Yuri, once filled in, thinks it’s hilarious. Yurio is, of course, incensed, and forgets that he’s supposed to be angry with Viktor in being angry with the waiter for thinking he could be related to Viktor _in any way_. If he notices that Viktor orders Yuri’s meal, he refrains from giving either of them shit about it.

They drop him back off at school by curfew, and Yurio even manages not to complain about having a curfew. Perhaps half a season of living with Lilia Baranovskaya has taught him the virtues of impersonal institutional care. Lilia had never intended to keep him in her house beyond the Grand Prix, apparently. No one knows if she has banished Yakov, too. Opinion is split as to whether Yakov’s relatively good mood means he’s escaped her clutches, or whether it means romance has been rekindled. Viktor, who knew Yakov throughout the marriage breakup, is privately betting on Yakov having moved out _but also_ on the pair of them having established an Understanding that involves regular sex.

‘I think Yurio’s grown up since Onsen On Ice,’ Viktor says to Yuri, on the way home.

‘Of course he has,’ Yuri says. And then, with a slight frown, ‘You hadn’t noticed?’

‘Hard to see evidence of maturity when he’s mostly yelling at me,’ Viktor grouches.

‘He cares about you,’ Yuri says, and squeezes Viktor’s hand.

‘Funny way of showing it.’ Viktor knows, and practically everyone except Yuri knows, that somewhere in the course of last year, Yuri Plisetsky diverted his energy from idolising Viktor to aggressively admiring Yuri Katsuki. 

‘Mmm,’ Yuri says. ‘Have you given him much of a chance to do anything other than yell at you?’

‘I see him all the time!’

‘What manoeuvres is he struggling with most right now?’ Yuri asks. 

‘None, as far as I know,’ Viktor says. ‘He’s a fifteen year old prodigy with perfect form.’

‘Really,’ Yuri says, in a tone that tells Viktor he knows something Viktor doesn’t. And then, just to make it clear, he adds, ‘I thought you were all about thoroughly analysing your competition, Viktor?’

‘Not sure I even count as competition for Plisetsky anymore,’ Viktor says. Yuri bumps into his shoulder companionably.

‘Sure you are. You’re the greatest.’ 

A small part of Viktor’s gut twists at that, but he nudges Yuri back.

‘Only until you overtake me. You owe me some gold medals, young man.’

Yuri flushes under the street light, and slips his arm around Viktor’s waist. ‘I expect you to make me work for it.’

‘I said I won’t go easy on you, didn’t I?’ Viktor says, managing to land a messy kiss on Yuri’s hair as they walk. ‘How else would I show you my love?’

‘Mmm,’ Yuri says, ‘if you want suggestions, I have some ideas.’

Viktor really loves this man.

A decent interval later - long enough to get home, exchange pleasantries with Klementina, and then shut themselves away in Viktor’s room - Yuri sits on the edge of Viktor’s bed, stark naked, and Viktor falls to his knees in front of him. 

‘Oh, I _like_ this,’ Yuri says, reaching out to cup Viktor’s cheek. Viktor realises he hasn’t actually done this before. He’s knelt down for Yuri a lot, but not when they both knew they were planning on having sex. His knees would like him to note that he has knelt down for Yuri a lot in the parts of the past year when Viktor hasn’t been subjecting them to intense impact work on the ice, but he ignores that. He reaches out, almost without thinking, for one of Yuri’s feet.

Yuri gives it to him, and Viktor rubs his thumb into the arch, bends the toes gently, stretches out the achilles tendon. He’s good at this, he knows he is. Yuri leans back on his elbows, so Viktor can’t see his face anymore. That’s okay, though: Yuri gives him plenty of feedback, in little moans and quiet instructions. Viktor loses track of time, but at some point Yuri pulls his foot away and holds out the other one. Not long after that change-over, Yuri’s monologue shifts from instructing to commentating.

‘You’re really good with your hands,’ he says, and Viktor flushes with pride. ‘Every time you did this I thought about your hands after.’ Yuri’s still looking at the ceiling, and now Viktor wishes desperately that he could see his face. ‘Thought about how good you are at this, what else you might be good at.’ 

‘Mnnngh,’ Viktor says. He feels like he ought to say something, is the thing, but what is there to say to that? _I thought about you a lot but I never thought you’d be this good at dirty talk. Or maybe I mean I never thought I’d be this weak for you._

‘Yeah,’ Yuri agrees. ‘Want to show me how good you are with your hands, Viktor?’

Viktor does. He really really does. He kisses the foot he’s holding and murmurs _yes_ into it.

Yuri sits up properly and looks down at him, runs one hand down his cheek. ‘I always thought you looked good on your knees, too,’ he says. Viktor wonders when _always_ started. He’s ended up on his knees on the ice enough times on camera - a couple of times as a finishing pose, other times because he’s had to drop or pass out at the end of a routine.

Yuri presses his thumb to Viktor’s lips, and Viktor kisses and licks at it.

‘Oh,’ Yuri says, half laughing. ‘You’re good with your tongue, too?’

Viktor looks up at him, hopeful. When did Yuri get to be so good at this? When did Viktor get to be so into this? If he stops to think about it it does his head in, a little: he’s never been what you could describe as submissive, before Yuri. A few times, he’s been read as dominant - in the push-me-around-and-hurt-me sense - although that role hasn’t really suited him: he can do it, but it feels like wearing a jacket a size too small. He likes praise. He likes doing well. He’s always loved giving head - guys, girls, persons of other persuasions - just about more than anything else, because that’s where he gets to really show off. But most people, he hasn’t wanted to drop to his knees for them and do anything they ask of him.

And yet, here he is. And here’s Yuri, pulling his head back a little by the hair.

‘Can you finger me?’ Yuri asks him. ‘Will you do that for me, Viktor?’

Viktor nods. Yuri smiles at him, a warm smile that lights up every corner of Viktor’s chest.

‘I knew I could rely on you,’ Yuri says.

‘Have you…?’ Viktor asks. ‘Before?’

Yuri nods. ‘On my own,’ he says. ‘No one else.’

Viktor probably shouldn’t be so into that, he thinks. It’s not really that he cares about virginity - he never cared about his, why would he care about anyone else’s? - it’s that he knows Yuri, knows how many people Yuri cares about and how few he really _trusts_. And he gets to be on the inside of all those barriers, now. And inside. Fuck. Inside Yuri.

Yuri is quite possibly psychic, because he tightens his hand in Viktor’s hair.

‘While I’ve got you here,’ he says. ‘I’ve got some questions to ask you.’

‘Anything.’

Yuri looks at him for a long moment. ‘Okay, just so you know, I’m using this on you next time you’re being weird or avoiding something.’

Viktor has a feeling he’s walked right into this trap. ‘What if I want _you_ to talk to _me_?’ he asks.

Yuri shrugs. ‘You could try getting on your knees and asking nicely,’ he says. Viktor can’t actually argue with that, as a strategy. _Please Yuri, tell me what’s wrong, tell me how I can help you, let me love you, let me care for you_... That’s definitely worth a try. ‘Not the point,’ Yuri says, and pulls Viktor’s head back a little. He leans forward himself, so he’s still looking into Viktor’s eyes.

‘Would you like to fuck me, Viktor?’ He enunciates the words carefully, almost politely. 

Viktor swallows, opens his mouth to speak, and finds his voice choked.

‘Not right now,’ Yuri says, and this time he sounds less careful, less controlled. ‘Um. Maybe that was obvious. But at some point, would you like to fuck me? Would you like me to fuck you?’

‘Yes,’ is all Viktor can say to that.

‘Which?’

‘Both,’ Viktor says.

‘How long have you wanted that?’

‘Forever,’ Viktor admits. ‘I’ve wanted you to fuck me since I met you.’

‘Were you going to say anything about it to me?’

‘Um. Maybe?’ He totally was. Just… not yet.

‘Sure,’ Yuri says. ‘Okay. Right now, I want you to finger me - wait.’ He stops. ‘ _You’ve_ done this before, right?’ Viktor nods. ‘Okay. I want you to finger me, and I want you to do the best job you can with it, alright?’

‘Yes, yes, yes,’ Viktor says, over and over like he’s drunk. Maybe he is.

‘But before you do,’ Yuri says, ‘You have to promise me something.’

‘Anything.’

Yuri gives him a look, like he’s surprised Viktor walked into this trap a second time. ‘Alright. You have to promise me you’ll talk about this, about… fucking, with me, later. When you’re not on your knees.’

‘Oh, no,’ Viktor says, summoning up his best sass. ‘A beautiful man wants to talk about fucking me. Whatever shall I do?’

Yuri grabs his jaw. ‘You’re not going to avoid the topic, are you, Viktor?’

All the sass drains out of Viktor at once, replaced by the terrible sense of having disappointed Yuri. ‘No, Yuri,’ he says. ‘No, I won’t. I’ll talk to you. I promise.’

‘Good man.’ Yuri leans in to kiss him. ‘I love you.’

‘I love you too,’ Viktor says. ‘Now, please, can we get on with fingering you?’

Yuri nods, and shuffles back a bit on the bed, letting Viktor go. He looses some of his sharp determination as he goes. ‘What should… what should I do?’

‘Let me kiss you,’ Viktor says, following him up onto the bed and sprawling over top of him. Yuri goes with it, wrapping his legs around Viktor’s waist and pulling him down into a hot, messy kiss. Viktor wonders how on earth he coped without this, without Yuri hard and wanting and wrapped shamelessly around him.

‘Lube,’ Viktor says, when he sits up a bit and takes stock. And then, ‘Oh, shit, lube.’

Yuri glares at him. ‘Please tell me you have lube.’

Viktor shakes his head. 

‘Why the hell not?’ Yuri half-sits up, tousle-haired and pissed off. 

‘I, uh. I don’t use it much?’ 

Yuri stares at him. 

‘I mean, I buy some when I’m buying condoms, usually,’ Viktor says. ‘And ISU hotels usually provide some of both, so I…’ He stops, reconsiders. ‘I don’t actually sleep with many people, you know.’

‘You knew you’d be sleeping with _me_!’

‘I take it you don’t have any either?’ Viktor slides off Yuri’s lap and runs a hand through his hair. 

‘Well, no,’ Yuri admits. 

‘What’s your excuse, then?’

‘I was coming to visit you! In your house! Where you keep your stuff!’ Yuri flops back on the bed, and, slightly to Viktor’s surprise, starts laughing. ‘This is ridiculous. _I_ have lube at home, why don’t you?’

‘I told you, I don’t bring people home much.’ Viktor wonders just how off-base Yuri’s impression of him his. Does Yuri really think he’s had _time_ to keep up a whirlwind sex life alongside training? Is there anyone who manages that? Okay: Chris does. Chris is special.

‘You never use it for yourself?’ Yuri is looking at him with open curiosity. Viktor shakes his head. ‘Huh.’

‘I don’t…’ Viktor looks at his hands for a second. ‘The angle’s all wrong with my own hands.’

‘That’s what they invented toys for,’ Yuri says.

Viktor stares at him, and then leans over so he’s looking into Yuri’s face. ‘You, Yuri Katsuki, never cease to surprise me.’

Yuri pokes him in the ribs. ‘Not a blushing innocent, Viktor Nikiforov,’ he says. ‘Blushing, maybe, but I can’t help that, it’s a physiological response.’

‘You blush right down your chest when you come,’ Viktor says, and nuzzles into the delicate spot behind Yuri’s ear.

‘Not my fault,’ Yuri says, gasping a little.

‘I like it,’ Viktor says, and nips Yuri’s earlobe. An idea occurs to him. ‘Okay, Mister Not Innocent.’

‘What?’

‘We did mention I’m good with my tongue, didn’t we?’

‘Planning on blowing me?’ Yuri stretches out on the bed, all delightful warm skin and gorgeous muscled body beneath Viktor. Viktor leans down and presses kisses to his chest, close to, but not right on, one nipple. ‘I think I can cope with that,’ Yuri says. ‘As an alternative.’

‘Mmm,’ Viktor says, and licks at the nipple he’s been circling. ‘Not quite what I was planning.’

‘Oh?’ Yuri wraps his fingers in Viktor’s hair again. ‘Go on. I like the sound of this.’

Viktor presses the flat of his tongue down on Yuri’s nipple, until Yuri’s breath catches. He’s not avoiding the instruction, it’s just… he’s never had to _talk_ this much, before.

‘I could-’ He hesitates. ‘I could… the idiom is ‘eating out’, I think.’

‘Which we know you love,’ Yuri says, with a smirk. 

‘Do you… need me to explain? Or can I show you?’ Viktor will, he will explain every move he could make in minute detail if that’s what Yuri needs. But he’d really rather not have to.

Yuri pulls him up to kiss him. ‘You’re doing good,’ he says, and Viktor lurches forward to kiss him again, heart swelling. ‘You can show me, this time.’ He huffs a tiny laugh. ‘Show me what you’ve got, Viktor.’

 _You_ , Viktor thinks. _I’ve got you._

* * *

Time passes. Viktor manages to spend more of his with Yurio, who is, sure enough, struggling with his jumps. All of them; he’s consistently turning out and under-rotating. He doesn’t seem to have grown much, height-wise, but he’s put on a bit of muscle, and it’s evidently affecting his balance. Viktor tries to tell him it will pass, and gets yelled at for his trouble. Yakov, who happened to be present for this, favours Viktor with an approving look despite his terribleness at being any sort of mentor.

Klementina introduces Yuri to stroganoff. Viktor tries, for about thirty seconds, to feel horrified about what all the cream and beef and potatoes are doing to their diet, but Klementina smiles angelically and says ‘Trust me, I’m a doctor’. It’s not as if Viktor was really about to say no to stroganoff. Especially not when it’s ten times better than the school version.

Yakov brings Yurio to observe Viktor practicing, and glares at Viktor, daring him to complain. He can’t: it’s something Yakov has always done, brought other skaters in to learn, to observe, even to critique. Mostly it’s been Viktor he brings in to critique other people, but Viktor doesn’t even have to ask to know that Yakov is fully expecting Yurio to shred Viktor’s performance. Viktor’s biggest problem right now is Yurio’s greatest strength - not his jumps, but the step sequences and transitions - and so Viktor knows this is about Yakov bolstering Yurio’s skewed perception of his own work. This fact doesn’t make it any more pleasant a prospect for Viktor.

The problem isn’t that Viktor is out of shape: his jumps are clean and his landings sharp. The problem is: he’s hit, late in life, the problem that half the up-and-coming juniors have. His technical work is impressive but the artistry is just… missing. When it comes to his free, he’s frustrated: the routine started life as an exhibition skate. It’s _fun_ , but it’s something he thought was fun when he picked it early last season. He’s not the same person anymore, and even though he’s polished up the choreography, it still feels like pulling on a mask along with the costume. The short program has the opposite problem: it’s too raw, too new, and Viktor has _too many things in his head_ to allow him to pin it down cleanly. 

In an average season, a skater has two, maximum three routines to worry about. Viktor has seven or eight. Yuri’s three, which he’s been skating alongside him all year, first leading Yuri through the choreography he designed and then following him himself. _Eros_ , as Yuri skates it, is not Viktor’s program anymore, but Victor knows it in every sinew of his own body, and the same for _Yuri on Ice_. And then there’s the paired version of _Stammi Vicino_ , which is not the same as it was when Viktor skated it solo and nor is it the same as the version Yuri skates alone. Then Viktor has the three routines he used for Nationals, and now _Fall at Your Feet_. He’s taken on too much, and he knows it. Yakov knows it. Yurio knows it. Everyone seems to know it except Yuri, who grips Viktor’s hands whenever Viktor voices anything like hesitation, and tells Viktor he’s amazing and that Yuri loves him and how glad he is to be on the same ice with him.

‘You don’t know who you’re supposed to be in this,’ Yurio says, when Viktor comes to the end of the short program. He crinkles his nose, like he’s about to say something that tastes terrible. ‘You’re not a femme fatale, Viktor. You weren’t when you were all young and beautiful, and you sure as hell aren’t now. Find your…’ He waves his hand and doesn't deign to put a word to it. ‘Whatever it is, you can’t get it by trying to imitate the piglet.’

Yakov gives Yurio an impressed look. Well, he’s not wrong, Viktor thinks. It just… looks ugly when stripped down like that.

‘I’m not _imitating_ ,’ he says.

Yurio gives him another one of those I-have-to-tell-you-this-but-the-words-taste-like-shit looks. ‘You don’t even realise when you are. It’s like you’ve tried to wipe your slate clean and re-write everything on it.’

‘He _inspires_ me!’ Viktor just about manages to have that come out as a declaration and not a whine. 

Yurio rolls his eyes. ‘Inspiration is not the same thing as duplication, idiot.’

Yakov continues to say nothing, and Viktor turns to him. ‘Did you bring him here to psychoanalyse me?’

‘I brought him here to comment on your performance,’ Yakov says. ‘Which he is doing.’ And then, after a moment’s pause, he adds, ‘Yuri knows you and Katsuki both, better than I do.’

Viktor doesn’t quite know what to say to that, but Yurio looks at him for a moment, oddly thoughtful. Then he says,

‘Yakov, go away.’ 

To Viktor’s shock, Yakov nods. ‘The pair of you, get some practice done. I’ll see both of you tomorrow,’ he says, and then he goes away.

‘What the hell?’ Viktor says. Yurio looks smug. 

‘He trusts me.’

‘He’s gone insane.’

‘Obviously, since he took you back. Give me a second to put on my skates.’ Yuri straightens up from the boards and grabs his bag from a nearby bench.

‘What are we doing?’ Viktor asks, as Yurio pushes out onto the ice.

‘Practicing,’ Yurio says, and proceeds to skate through one of the step sequences from _Agape_. Viktor watches, not entirely sure what’s going on here. Yuri’s right, he hasn’t been paying Yurio the attention the kid deserves - no, wait, the attention Viktor _wants_ to. It’s not about what Yurio deserves, he’s got a pair of world-class coaches for that. It’s that Viktor spent a ton of time with him during his final Junior season, because Viktor actually _liked_ him, saw something of himself in him, wanted to be the kind of person who took time out of their own schedule to nurture younger skaters.

Yurio goes through the sequence twice, and then one of the jumping passes, before something catches Viktor’s eye and he skates over. 

‘You’re leaning too far into that turn,’ he says, skating the same figure for illustration. It’s one of the bits that’s changed a lot since Viktor choreographed it. It’s been pushed to the edge, worked to capitalise on Yurio’s flexibility and maximise the illusion that he’s a delicate creature who might break at any moment. Viktor might have been able to pull it off when he was Yurio’s age - maybe. Not a whole routine of it, because Viktor at sixteen was, as Yuri so concisely put it, a hot mess.

‘You’re right,’ Yurio says. He frowns. ‘You know what’s great about working with Lillia?’ he asks. 

‘Uh,’ Viktor says, trying to follow the logical connection. ‘Seeing her take Yakov down a peg?’

‘Yeah, that’s great,’ Yurio agrees. ‘Second best, though, is that she’s never worked with _you_. Do you know how many times this season Yakov has accidentally called me Vitya?’

Viktor winces. ‘Sorry?’ Hell. For someone who enjoys lecturing Viktor about his long shadow, Yakov sure doesn’t help sometimes.

‘Eh,’ Yurio says. ‘Could be worse. Imagine if he thought of me as mini-Georgi.’ They both consider this for a moment, and silently agree never to speak of it again. ‘The point is, this routine is _better_ now than when you choreographed it.’

Does Yurio think Viktor doesn’t know that? You’d think holding the world record would be enough for him.

‘I know,’ Viktor says. ‘What do you want me to say here? I’ve got no chance against you this season, maybe never again. I know that.’

Yurio looks taken aback, and then punches him in the chest. ‘You _moron_ ,’ he says. ‘You think I care about that?’

‘Uh, yes? You should,’ Viktor says. ‘Gotta defend that world record.’

‘I’m going to take the other one off your piglet, too,’ Yurio says, right on cue. ‘But that’s _not my point_.’

Viktor holds up his hands. ‘Okay, okay. What is your point?’

‘You know who else I’ve worked with who isn’t trying to train up a mini you?’ Yurio asks him.

‘No?’

‘You!’ Yurio says, and hits him again, more lightly this time. ‘You gave me this routine and you told me it’s one you could’ve won with, but you didn’t tell me _how you would skate it_.’ Viktor goes to speak, and Yurio makes a ‘shut up’ gesture with his hand, cutting him off. ‘And I’ve been trying to skate like you _my entire life_. So’s the piglet.’

‘I know, I know,’ Viktor says, pushing his hair back from his face. ‘Which is… You're both capable of things _I’m not capable of doing_. Yuri’s been sabotaging his own potential, and you’re yet to grow into yours.’

Yurio folds his arms. ‘So, we should find our own voices, not rely on channelling you, et caetera, et caetera?’

‘Yeah?’

‘Can you hear yourself, Viktor?’

* * *

Yakov decides to really lay into Viktor, and he choses one of Yuri and Viktor’s evening sessions to do it. He’d had to skip the afternoon one for some reason, Viktor doesn’t really remember why, but he’d said he’d drop by in the evening.

‘Your artistic score is going to be shit,’ Yakov says to him. ‘Your choreography has some promise in it, I grant you that, but unless you can pull yourself together, it’s not worth a gram of horseshit, do you hear me? Last week you were all melodrama, this week you look like someone stuck a pole up your ass.’

He says all of this in Russian, thankfully, although he usually switches to English whenever Yuri’s around. 

For a moment, Yakov looks like he might be softening. He leans his elbows on the boards. ‘You know what, Viktor, I’ll let you in on a little coaching secret. Plisetsky wouldn’t be half as good as he is right now if you’d stayed here. When he told me, last year, you were going to choreograph for him, I nearly forbade it.’

Viktor looks up at him, startled. ‘Why?’

‘Because he’s worshipped the ground you walked on - the ice you skate on, whatever - for the past two years. It happens sometimes - you get two skaters who spend just plain too much time together. Sometimes,’ and here, he casts a baleful look at Yuri, who is doing simple drills at the other end of the ice, ‘it’s because they’re dating, but _usually_ that’s not the problem, because of the distance in styles between men’s and ladies skating - and if it’s a pair, well, dating isn’t the problem, breakups are.’

‘Your point, Yakov?’ Viktor says, just about managing not to bite his coach’s head off. He’s been yelled at for wasting his time with Yuri (Yakov); he’s been yelled at for risking Yuri’s career by returning to his own (Yurio); he’s been yelled at for treating Yuri like a holiday from his real career (Mari). He’s prepared to be yelled at about Yuri for more reasons, if need be. He’s prepared to ignore them all.

‘My point,’ Yakov says, ‘is the problems are normally hero-worship ones. I was willing to take that risk with Yuri, if only because he sometimes listens to you when he won’t listen to anyone else. For his debut season, I thought, that would be fine. But I was going to have to separate you after that - the last thing I wanted happening was you deciding to retire and coach him instead.’

Viktor stares at him in bafflement. He hadn’t even been thinking of coaching Yurio. Except. Well. What Yuri had said to him at the banquet had stuck in his head, and maybe, if the triplets hadn’t posted that video… 

‘The difference is,’ Yakov says, ‘Plisetsky’s no threat to _you_.’

‘I rather think he is,’ Viktor says. ‘World record, remember?’

‘He’s _competition_ for you,’ Yakov says. ‘But I would never have ended up with you trying to skate a second-rate routine inspired by and badly imitating Yuri.’

Normally, Viktor takes Yakov’s lectures in his stride. Yakov tells him he’s done badly; he resolves to do better. Yakov tells him the thing he’s doing can’t be done, and Viktor resolves to prove to him that he can take his idea of the possible and shove it where the sun has never shone.

‘It’s not a second-rate routine,’ he says, aiming for determined, and ending up at mulish. He pushes off toward the centre of the ice. ‘I’m going to practice.’

‘It’s second-rate as long as you’re skating it,’ Yakov shouts after him. ‘Maybe you should’ve given it to your protégé!’

He yells that last bit in English, because he’s a fucking bastard. Viktor sees Yuri flinch, and stumble a simple rocker turn. 

Viktor keeps up his practice for half an hour or so; fifteen minutes into it, Yakov yells at him that he’ll see him tomorrow and he’d better have some improvement to show him. Twenty-five minutes in, he notices Yuri has given up on his work, and is leaning on the boards, watching Viktor with a frown on his face. Five minutes after that, Viktor gives up and skates over.

‘Go on, tell me it’s shit. Everyone else has.’

Yuri shakes his head, and slides one hand around Viktor’s hip. ‘It’s beautiful. It’s… it needs work,’ he says, but his eyes are shining, ‘but it’s going to be amazing, Viktor, I know it is. You know it is.’ He bites his lip for a second, and then says, all in a rush, ‘I know it’s rude of me to say so, but Yakov’s wrong, Viktor, he’s so wrong. No one else could do with this routine what you can.’

Viktor bites back the urge to point out that what he can do with this routine, apparently, is a piss-poor imitation of Yuri himself. As far as he knows, no one’s said that in so many words to Yuri, and if Yuri’s noticed, he hasn’t said so.

‘It’s just Yakov,’ he says, shrugging out of Yuri’s grasp. ‘That’s how he is. I’m used to it. This is how he motivates people.’

Yuri shakes his head. ‘I don’t… Doesn’t he have confidence in you?’

‘Of course he does,’ Viktor says. ‘Five world championships worth of confidence. His reputation is on the line here, as much as mine.’

Yuri’s hands ball into fists. ‘Can we… can we go home now?’ he asks. 

‘No,’ Viktor says. ‘You can. I need to practice.’

Yuri sits at the edge of the rink and waits for him for the best part of an hour, and then they take the bus home in silence. If he was on his own, Viktor would have his bicycle with him, and despite the fact that he’s always worn out at the end of a training day, the twenty minutes of a different kind of exertion would help in its way. Better than sitting on the bus, twitching, at least.

Klementina is out when they get home - either it’s a late night at the clinic, or, more likely, she’s at Olga’s place. Yuri fishes around in the fridge, and bats away Viktor’s attempts to be helpful, and they end up with a weird sort of fruit salad for an evening snack. Yuri sprawls on the couch and Viktor slumps on the floor, head next to Yuri’s hand so he can be petted while they unwind. 

‘Hey Viktor?’ Yuri says, after a while.

‘Mmm?’

‘What did Yakov do in your debut year, when you…’

‘When I was a hot mess?’ Viktor laughs. ‘Yelled at me. A lot. Cut back my personal coaching time, when I failed to qualify for Worlds or the Euros. I bribed one of the older students to teach me the quad sal, just to prove him wrong.’

Yuri’s fingers tighten involuntarily in Viktor’s hair. ‘Viktor, that’s…’

‘For fuck’s sake, don’t pity me,’ Viktor says, a little harsher than he meant. ‘That’s just how things are around here. It worked out for me, didn’t it? I’ve been proving Yakov wrong for more than ten years, I can do it again.’

‘I knew you could,’ Yuri says, quietly. ‘Everyone said when you messed up your debut that would be the end of you, but I knew better.’

They go to bed without saying much more, that night. Viktor doesn’t sleep well, and in the middle of the night he rolls over and hits Yuri in the face, which makes him feel even worse.

* * *

Mid-January, Klementina and Yuri decide they’re having a party. Or a brunch. Something like that. Klementina’s inviting her girlfriend, and Yuri’s inviting Yurio, and Viktor… has no actual friends, he realises.

‘I had school friends,’ he says, to Yuri. ‘I just… they were all athletes too, most of them aren’t even in Saint Petersburg anymore.’

‘Ignaty’s still around,’ Klementina puts in. She adds, for Yuri’s benefit, ‘My cousin. He plays hockey, that’s how Viktor found me as a tenant.’

‘Are you seriously suggesting I invite Ignaty to brunch?’ Viktor asks, and Klementina shudders. ‘Thought not.’ He’d been through a period of renewed friendliness with Ignaty last season, because he - a few year’s Viktor’s junior, but they’d been in some of the same classes, ones Viktor had been held back in due to poor academic performance - had started dating Mila, but fortunately for everyone, that seems to have come to an end while Viktor was in Japan.

Yuri is looking at Viktor seriously. ‘All your friends are athletes?’ 

Viktor shrugs. ‘And people who hang out with athletes, I guess?’ He dated an opera singer once, but he thinks that’s probably not what Yuri’s asking about.

‘I feel like this explains a lot about you,’ Yuri says. Viktor thinks he should be insulted, except Yuri says it in a tone of genuine interest, like it _does_ explain something.

‘If all my friends were doctors,’ Klementina says, ‘I would probably kill someone. Starting with my friends.’

‘How about this,’ Viktor says, ‘I’ll be your non-doctor friend if you be my token non-athlete friend, and neither of us will murder anyone.’

‘I feel like I’ve got that covered by dating a graphic designer,’ Klementina says. ‘But thanks for calling me your friend, Viktor.’ She pats him on the cheek. ‘I’ll put you low on the list of people to murder.’

Viktor doesn’t know what he expected Olga to be like. A graphic designer with a daughter and dating Klementina could be any sort of person, really. He certainly wasn’t picturing short, round and with multiple facial piercings. The kid is round-faced, minus the piercings, and also quite short, although it’s hard to tell how short is short for a two-year old. In her winter outdoor clothes she’s about as wide as she is tall, but somewhat more normally proportioned when removed from the puffy suit.

Yurio regards both Olga and her child as if they’re a dangerous species, and opts to help Yuri and Klementina with whatever they’re doing in the kitchen. Yurio is pretty competent with food, Viktor remembers that from his time in Hasetsu - until this season he’s gone home to Grandpa for most of the summer every year, and evidently Grandpa’s taught him useful life skills like how not to starve.

That leaves Viktor to make conversation with Olga. That’s fine: Viktor’s good at small talk. This is one of the times he wishes Makkachin were here, though: in Viktor’s limited experience with small children, a dog is much more interesting to under-fives than Viktor himself.

Olga, it turns out, is from Novgorod, and had moved here with her husband some years before Alina - the kid - was born. Viktor gets the impression the marriage did not work out well, but the move to Saint Petersburg did, both in terms of Olga’s career and her social life.

Midway through this civil exercise in adult small talk, Alina, who has been hiding behind her mother’s legs, decides that, one, Viktor is utterly fascinating, and two, he probably isn’t dangerous. She approaches him and, very solemnly, offers him a stuffed giraffe. 

‘Um.’ Viktor says. ‘Thanks?’

Alina considers him for a moment, then says, ‘What’s your name?’

‘Viktor,’ Viktor says. He’s already been introduced to her, but maybe she wasn’t listening.

‘I’m Alina,’ she says. After a second, she points to the toy Viktor’s holding. ‘Dmitry’s a giraffe.’

‘He’s a very handsome giraffe,’ Viktor says. ‘Do you want him back?’

‘No,’ Alina says, cheerfully. ‘He likes you.’

Viktor wonders what he’s supposed to say to that, but Alina doesn’t seem to be concerned about his lack of response. She sucks on her finger for a moment, and then asks, ‘What’s your favourite colour?’ The words come out slowly, with odd gaps between them, but perfectly comprehensible.

‘Pink,’ Viktor says, without hesitation. 

‘My dress is pink,’ Alina says.

‘It’s pretty.’ Viktor smiles at her. ‘I have a pink suit I wear sometimes.’

‘Oooh.’ Alina looks suitably impressed with this. ‘You can have pink hair, too, you know,’ she says. ‘A lady makes it pink.’

‘Sometimes it’s a man,’ Olga says. Her hair is not currently pink, but the shade of red is definitely not her natural hair colour. 

‘Sometimes a man,’ Alina agrees. ‘With hair … stands up.’ She grabs strands of her own hair and holds them up above her head.

Viktor is completely and utterly charmed. ‘That’s called a mohawk,’ he says. He looks at the giraffe, which has a tuft of hair on its head. ‘Like Dmitry here, he’s got a mohawk.’

Alina claps her hands over her mouth and giggles. 

‘Do you have siblings?’ Olga asks, as Viktor holds out the giraffe to Alina.

‘No,’ he says. Alina takes the giraffe, and presses herself up against Viktor’s leg.

‘Vik...’

‘Vitya will do,’ he tells her. She parrots it back, ‘Vitya,’ with wide eyes.

At this point, Klementina comes in and scoops up Alina to wash her hands before brunch, and Yuri and Yurio appear to summon Olga and Viktor.

‘I like your child,’ Viktor says, to Olga. ‘She doesn’t care about my choreography.’

‘I don’t care about your choreography either,’ Olga says, poker-faced.

‘You’re my favourite people,’ Viktor says. ‘Hey Yuri!’ He switches, without thinking about it, to English. ‘These are my new favourite people!’

‘That’s… good?’ Yuri says. He seems a bit bemused, but in that way that he’s always acted bemused around Viktor.

Yurio is glaring at him again. Viktor wonders what he’s done, and then realises that _Yurio_ understood the whole conversation. Including the bit about not caring about choreography. Which Yuri didn’t get. Yuri, who does care a lot about Viktor’s choreography.

‘Sorry, Yurio,’ Vitkor says, ‘you just lost your spot as my favorite child.’

‘Fuck you, Nikiforov,’ Yurio says, the insult to his maturity having successfully distracted him from whatever else he might have said.

‘The Nishigori triplets will be very jealous,’ Yuri says.

‘Oh, you know they only tolerate me because I hang around you.’ The Nishigori triplets have a Katsuki Yuri fan page now - Viktor suspects their father is actually doing most of the work, but their faces are the ones on the sidebar.

‘They tolerate you,’ Yurio puts in, ‘because one day they’re going to sell an indecent photograph of the two of you to the paparazzi. It’ll pay for university for all three of them.’

Viktor shrugs. ‘A noble cause, I can’t begrudge them that.’ He smirks at Yuri. ‘We should do them a favour and arrange something.’ 

Yuri’s face goes bright red, and Olga gives up pretending she’s not laughing at them. Yurio pretends to be disgusted, even though he brought the idea up.

Alina, freshly washed, insists on sitting next to Viktor throughout brunch, and insists on Dmitry the giraffe sitting on the table in between them. Olga tries to apologise, but Viktor won’t let her. He lets Alina sneak bits of food off his plate, even though she has exactly the same food on her plate and isn’t eating it.


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which it is once again demonstrated that trying to support your partner with exactly the same kind of support you would like in their place may not be the most effective choice.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Again, eternal gratitude to saraaah. <3<3<3

Somewhere in mid-January Viktor and Yuri have a fight in the rink. Yuri’s been under-rotating the flip for a few days, and is pissy because of it. He’s been making some tweaks to the step sequences in _Yuri On Ice_ , too, and Viktor loves them. He knows perfectly well that he loves them because they’re the kind of work he _wants_ to be doing with his own short program - polishing an already exquisite artefact - and instead he’s stuck with a program that should express everything he feels and instead is trapped in every frustration he’s accumulated this winter.

‘Leave the flip,’ Viktor says. ‘Come back to it later.’ He smiles what he hopes is a winning smile at Yuri. ‘Show me the step sequence again.’

‘No,’ Yuri says, jaw set. ‘I want to do the flip again.’

He does, and doesn’t just under-rotate it, he crashes spectacularly. Viktor skates out and offers him a hand up, but Yuri ignores it. 

‘Take a break,’ Viktor says. ‘Really. Leave the flip. Leave it for a few days.’

‘Fine,’ Yuri says. ‘Ice is all yours,’ and skates off. Viktor stares after him for a second: Yuri is rarely that short with him. But Viktor _does_ need the practice, so he runs through his short without the music. He finishes with the cantilever - not the long one across the whole rink, a shorter one that ends in the middle of the rink. Hauling himself out of it isn’t as easy as it used to be - going from laid back to upright without touching the ice, over and over again, means his back is going to hate him for the rest of the season - but it’s worth it, ending up with him on his knees facing the judging panel. Or it will: right now it ends up with him facing Yuri. Who, Viktor has to admit, was rather more on his mind than any judging panel when he put this together.

Yuri isn’t even really looking at him. He’s sitting on one of the benches, staring across the ice, so obviously worried that Viktor wants to fling himself at Yuri’s feet (what’s new?) and beg him to let Viktor fix it, whatever it is. Only the problem is Yuri’s quad flip, as far as Viktor knows, and Viktor _can’t_ fix that. He levers himself to his feet and skates off, puts his skate guards on, and sits next to Yuri like a normal person.

Yuri lets him pick up one hand and lace their fingers together.

‘It’s going to be okay,’ Viktor tells him, and he really does believe it. Yuri, at least, is going to be just fine. ‘Give the flip a rest for a few days.’

‘If I fuck this up,’ Yuri says, staring at the floor, ‘at the Four Continents or Worlds, it’s going to reflect badly on you.’

‘And if I fuck up,’ Viktor says, ‘it’ll reflect badly on you. Everyone will say, _look at him, what’s he doing with washed-up former champion Viktor Nikiforov?_.’ It’s supposed to be a ludicrous joke, but the words come out sounding more bitter than Viktor intended.

‘Don’t be ridiculous,’ Yuri says, and still doesn’t look at him. ‘I promised you a Grand Prix gold and didn’t get it, you should’ve given up on me there.’

‘I promised _you_ I’d coach you to gold,’ Viktor says, thumb rubbing over Yuri’s ring gently. ‘Not either of our faults Plisetsky is freakishly good.’

‘What about the rest of the season, though?’ Yuri asks. ‘JJ’s not going to make the same mistakes again. Altin gets better every time he competes.’

‘And maybe New Zealand have been raising up a secret wunderkind to wipe the ice with all of you,’ Viktor says. ‘All you can do is make the most of your routines. Yours, that we worked on together. No one else can do with them what you do; everyone else can… go hang,’ Viktor grabs for an idiom and finds that one. Go fuck themselves is probably not quite what he should be wishing on Yuri’s - or his own - competition.

Yuri shakes his head. ‘I need… I need this to have been worth your time, Viktor.’ He must be feeling slightly better, though, because he sneaks a sideways glance at Viktor. ‘Telling everyone else to go hang doesn’t secure me a gold medal for you to kiss.’

Viktor, as he does every time this comes up, has to take a moment to clear his mind of the mental image of Yuri, naked except for a gold medal, making Viktor beg to touch it. Yuri had decided his Nationals gold this season doesn’t count: only major international competitions count. Viktor had just about managed not to whine down the phone and beg him to change that policy. (Honestly, if it’s about how much Viktor admires him, surely a gold he won alone, without Viktor and in a competition he’d spectacularly failed in last season, counts. Viktor should be kissing that medal every damn day.)

Then he has a revelation. He’s turning the ring around and around on Yuri’s finger and they’re talking about gold medals and it’s taken him _this long_ to put two and two together.

Viktor pulls Yuri’s hand up to his lips and kisses the ring on it. Yuri flushes prettily.

‘Yuri,’ Viktor says. His voice cracks a little. ‘I love you.’

‘I love you too,’ Yuri says. He frowns. ‘You know me worrying about… competitions and things doesn’t mean I don’t love you, right?’

There, that’s the opening Viktor needs.

‘And you know I’d marry you if you never earn a single gold, right?’

And that’s when it all goes terribly wrong. Yuri stiffens and shrinks back from him.

‘You don’t think I can win?’ He sounds utterly gutted.

‘Of course I do! I just…’ He closes his eyes for a second. ‘Even if you don’t.’

‘Okay, I know Worlds is a long shot,’ Yuri says. ‘But you’re not even skating the Four Continents!’

‘What?’ Viktor reaches out for him instinctively, but Yuri shies away.

‘If you think I’m no good, will you just say so!’ Yuri’s genuinely distraught now: not crying, but almost vibrating with distress, and half-shouting at Viktor.

‘I think you’re fucking brilliant!’ Viktor yells back at him. ‘Would I even be here if I didn’t?’ he asks, in a more moderate tone.

Yuri looks around them. ‘Well, yeah, this is your home rink,’ he says. At least he’s not yelling anymore.

‘Whatever.’ Viktor rubs his face with one hand. ‘What the hell is this about, Yuri?’

‘You’re trying to… prepare me for failure!’ Yuri says. ‘I don’t need preparing for failure, Viktor. I’m great at failing. I’m a world champion fucker-upper-er.’

‘You’re a world champion self-criticiser, is what you are,’ Viktor says. Yuri lets him catch his hand and hold it again. ‘I’m going to need you to stop trash-talking my fiancé like this. He’s fucking brilliant and I’m going to kiss every medal he ever wins, do you understand me?’

There’s a scrape and they look up, with what are probably very guilty expressions, to find Yurio staring down at them. Viktor is about to protest that there’s no rule against them holding hands and shouting in the rink, and also this isn’t even Yurio’s practice slot so why is he here, but Yurio gets his word in first.

‘I’m going to call Otabek,’ he says. ‘And I’m going tell him that we’re teaming up against you. My new competition policy is it doesn’t matter which of us gets gold as long as we beat you two.’

‘Pretty sure it’s only in pairs skating you’re allowed to form a team with a foreign skater,’ Yuri says, reasonably enough.

‘Hasn’t stopped you two, has it?’ Yurio says, and, with a disgusted huff, stomps off.

* * *

Viktor takes one of his morning hours and does nothing but fuck up the quad flip in various combinations and sequences until he manages it: quad flip, half loop, triple flip. 

His first thought is to ask Yuri to stick around during his afternoon session with Yakov, and show them both. His _second_ thought is Yuri’s week-long streak of under-rotated and off-balance flips and resulting falls. His third thought is _I know Worlds is a long shot but you’re not even skating the Four Continents_.

He doesn’t show anyone the sequence. Which means he’s still got a mediocre routine and now he’s got a spectacular jump sequence he isn’t using.

* * *

They get an evening off, which Viktor has been really looking forward to. He’s not exactly making plans, because making plans would require committing to one thing, when what has been getting him through these gruelling weeks is the fact that he’s allowed to think up a whole _variety_ of things he can do to, or for, or with Yuri. 

Instead, he starts the evening by doing a series of minor things wrong. First, there’s a hole in his favourite sock. Then he’s running laundry, and somehow overflows the washing machine. Viktor pouts and looks for the number of a plumber; Yuri finds and opens the emergency drain, and then fishes out wad of plastic and paper from the regular drain. Apparently Viktor’s washed one of his credit cards. Apparently credit cards break in the washing machine now. Apparently Yuri knows how to do minor washing machine repair, which is both incredibly attractive and incredibly infuriating.

While Yuri is putting the washing machine back in order, Viktor attempts to make it up to him by starting dinner. About five minutes later, Viktor has sliced a long shallow cut into the pad of his thumb and turned some onions black in a frying pan.

‘What… did you do?’ Yuri says, peering into the pan.

‘The thing with the onions!’ One thing Viktor has figured out in the past few weeks is that 80% of the vaguely-European dishes Yuri knows start with an onion, and about half the Asian ones too. Not katsudon: that gets the long green onions that you don’t cook through, to go on the top.

Yuri takes the blackened pan off the stove and puts it onto a pot-holder. ‘Wrong hotplate,’ he says. ‘That one will burn almost anything you put on it.’

‘They’re different?’ Viktor feels betrayed by his stove. ‘I thought they were different sizes for different size pots.’

‘That too,’ Yuri says. ‘Hey, Viktor, you’re bleeding!’

Viktor looks down at his thumb, which does turn out to be bleeding, as well as stinging a stupid amount for what’s barely a scrape.

‘Fucking _hell_.’ He balls the hand up into a fist. ‘I can’t… fucking hell, I can’t get anything right today.’

Yuri takes the offended hand and kisses the knuckles, waits for Viktor to relax, and then sucks Viktor’s thumb into his mouth. 

‘Oh for… it’s just a little cut.’ Viktor pulls his hand back, and then feels terrible when Yuri’s eyes go wide with surprise. ‘You and I have both had worse from skates.’

‘Yeah,’ Yuri says, quietly. ‘But those little knife cuts are the worst. Well, except for paper cuts. Paper cuts are the worst, then little knife cuts.’

Viktor stomps off to the bathroom to put something on the cut. Yuri’s crinkled expression of concern follows him across the living room, giving him a prickly feeling between his shoulder blades.

After dinner, Viktor ends up sprawled on the floor, texting Chris, while Yuri does whatever it is he does on his phone. 

19.01: Did you know credit cards break in the washing machine?  
Chris, 19.01: I do now. Did you find that out the hard way?  
19.02: Also if a mess of broken credit card and paper gets in one of the pipes in a washing machine they can fuck the whole thing up.  
Chris, 19.03: It’s people like you, Viktor, who keep the maintenance workers of the world employed.  
Chris, 19.04: Maybe I should retrain. Give up the ice, get an apprentissage in whitegoods repair.  
19.05: Why choose? Apparently Yuri can repair washing machines _and_ land three kinds of quads.  
19.06: Also my stove betrayed me. It likes Yuri better than me.  
Chris, 19.07: Are you seriously complaining to me because you’re engaged to someone who can cook?  
19.07: It’s irritating.  
Chris, 19.08: Most people generally regard that as an optimal trait in a spouse.  
Chris, 19.08: Doesn’t even have to be a spouse. A girl cooked me dinner the other night, by the end of it I was willing to let her walk all over me.  
Chris, 19.09: Of course, I was planning to let her walk all over me anyway. I helped her choose the shoes to do it in; the dinner was more of a bonus.  
19.10: You’re incorrigible.  
Chris, 19.11: Au contraire, cheri, I am very corrigible. I take correction on a regular basis, from experts.  
19.12: Too much information, Giacometti.  
19.12: What? I was referring to training.

At this point, Viktor is distracted from shit-talking with Chris by Yuri sliding off the couch and crawling - no, prowling: prowling on all fours up the length of Viktor’s body. Viktor drops his phone at once and decides Yuri’s insulting practical competence is utterly outweighed by the way he can completely fascinate Viktor just by looming over him.

‘Turn over,’ Yuri says, and Viktor turns, because when has allowing Yuri access to his ass ever worked out badly for him? Well: this time it works out with him banging into Yuri’s elbow with his elbow, because Yuri has evidently not thought through the fact that Viktor actually needs to move in order to turn over. They get rearranged in the end, Viktor face-down and Yuri sitting square across his ass.

Viktor doesn’t know what he expected out of this, but what he gets isn’t it. Yuri smooths one palm down the length of Viktor’s back, and then starts drumming up and down either side of his spine. Viktor recognises it, of course - it’s something he does to Yuri when he’s carrying so much tension that Viktor can’t start a massage by working any given knot, because Yuri’s all knot. Plenty of massage therapists have pummelled their way up and down Viktor’s back over the years, and none of them make him want to flinch and squirm away like Yuri does.

He buries his face in his arms, and tries to calm the fuck down. If Yuri wants to massage him, Yuri’s allowed to massage him. 

‘And you lecture me about carrying tension,’ Yuri says, shifting to kneading Viktor’s shoulders. ‘Hey,’ he says, when Viktor twitches. ‘Hey, tell me if you want me to ease up.’

‘I’ve taken worse,’ Viktor says, which is true. ‘Ease up’ is not really in the vocabulary of his physical therapist.

Yuri hums something non-committal and goes back to what he’s doing. Viktor lasts another minute or two before he finds himself twitching again, gritting his teeth. He knows it's stupid, but that apparently doesn’t mean he has any control over the part of his brain that’s decided this whole scenario is Wrong.

‘Shhh,’ Yuri says, and kisses the back of Viktor’s neck. That does get him to relax, a little. ‘You are never allowed to lecture me about resistance to physical therapy again.’

‘Those are my muscle knots,’ Viktor says, trying for a laugh. ‘I earned them the hard way. You can’t just come in here and wipe them out.’

‘Oh, yes I can,’ Yuri says. ‘You do it for me all the time.’ He digs his thumbs into a particularly stubborn kink below Viktor’s shoulder blade, and Viktor makes a weird, high pitched noise somewhere between pain and relief.

‘Sorry,’ Viktor says.

‘Don’t be.’ Yuri rubs the ball of his palm into the spot. ‘Making stupid noises means it’s working.’

‘Not my favourite kind of stupid noises to be making,’ Viktor says.

‘Yes, well, those can be next,’ Yuri tells him. He works on Viktor’s back for a few more moments, and Viktor finds himself relaxing into it, until Yuri starts talking to him again. ‘I’m asking a lot of you,’ he says, ‘with coaching on top of your own training, and… don’t think I don’t know that, Viktor.’ He shifts a bit, so he can knead into the small of Viktor’s back. ‘I can see the toll it’s taking on you. I think I should say I feel bad, but I don’t, because I know you and I know you’re brilliant at both and…’ He hesitates, and forges on. ‘Call me selfish, but I want you all the ways I can get you.’

Viktor reaches a split-second decision. He rolls sideways, tipping Yuri off him and then grabbing for him as he hits the ground, legs still tangled around Viktor’s waist. Viktor drags him in and kisses him desperately. Part of him isn’t sure what he’s trying to do: reward that last pronouncement, or evade the weird feeling the massage was giving him. Possibly both. He and Yuri scrabble a little at each other, simultaneously trying to get closer and to find a halfway comfortable position on the hard floor. A compromise is reached, one that allows for messy, urgent kissing and maximum amounts of groping. 

Roughly at the point where Viktor’s starting to consider the advantages of disentangling long enough to get naked, and mentally weighing up options like ‘give Yuri a blowjob that will take Viktor half a lifetime to outdo’ and ‘what exactly would Viktor have to do to get Yuri to pin him down again only with more sex and less tormenting Viktor’s muscles?’, Yuri sits up abruptly.

‘Viktor!’ he says, apparently shocked. ‘This is the living room!’

Viktor blinks at him in confusion. This would hardly be the first time he’s blown someone in his living room. It’s not something he does every other week, but it’s definitely happened before, at least twice.

Then he remembers he has a lodger now. Who is nowhere in evidence, thankfully, but who would probably appreciate not coming home to find two naked men on the floor (Or, Viktor mentally amends, if she _would_ appreciate that, Viktor doesn’t feel like being the one to cater to that interest.)

Yuri runs a hand through his hair, which does absolutely nothing to make it look less tousled. ‘I was _trying_ to give you a proper massage,’ he says, frowning a little. ‘I… thought that would help.’

Viktor leans up and kisses his cheek. ‘It’s not your fault I’m immensely easily distracted by your presence.’

Yuri laughs at that, and pushes him back onto the floor. ‘And yet I survived _months_ of you having your hands all over me, without jumping you every time.’

‘Pity,’ Viktor says. He claps his hand over his heart. ‘I’m sorry, darling, I lack your patience.’ 

Yuri gives him an unexpectedly solemn look, and then shakes his head. ‘No,’ he says. ‘No, you don’t lack patience.’ He brushes his thumb over Viktor’s cheek, and Viktor turns his head into the touch instinctively. ‘You’re very patient with me.’

Viktor has to close his eyes at that: looking at Yuri seems like too much, all of a sudden. ‘Take me to bed?’ he asks. It comes out softer, more vulnerable than he’d like.

‘Of course,’ Yuri says. He makes a point of helping Viktor up, even though Viktor doesn’t need it.

‘Lie down and let me finish the massage properly,’ Yuri says, once the bedroom door is securely shut.

Viktor finds himself shaking his head, backing Yuri into the door instead. Yuri puts one hand on his chest, holding him at a little distance, and Viktor freezes. If Yuri orders him, actually repeats the imperative, Viktor knows he will go. That knowledge sits oddly in his gut, like he can’t tell if he’s dreading or looking forward to having it verified. 

Yuri doesn’t order him. ‘Are you sure?’ he says, instead, and the arm holding him away bends a little.

That’s all Viktor needs; he pushes forward, pinning Yuri to the door, kissing him. Lips, neck, collar. Viktor pulls back long enough to get Yuri’s shirt off, and uses that opportunity to offer Yuri some kind of explanation.

‘I really want to touch you,’ he says, and Yuri smiles.

‘Is that so?’

‘Yes. Please.’ Viktor drops the shirt and drops to his knees, rubbing his face into Yuri’s hip. ‘Let me…’

‘Let you what?’ Yuri has to be asking that to tease him: there’s no way he’s failed to deduce what Viktor’s asking for. And for all the nonchalance in his voice, Yuri’s dick is definitely interested.

‘Please, Yuri.’ Viktor bats his eyelashes a little, for effect, and Yuri seems to be amused by that; he rubs Viktor’s cheekbone with one thumb. ‘Please, Yuri, let me suck your cock.’ He has a split-second flashback to the afternoon in Hasetsu, right before he left: kneeling in front of Yuri and mentally congratulating himself for keeping his dignity together and not begging to suck him. ‘It’s such a nice cock,’ he says, ‘and I’ve been wanting to suck you off for so long.’

‘You sucked me off two days ago, was it that forgettable?’ Yuri asks. The words are teasing him but the voice is breathy: he _likes_ it when Viktor begs.

‘It was amazing,’ Viktor tells him, quite truthfully, ‘but a few weeks is not enough time to make up for how very many months I have spent wanting your dick in my mouth.’

Yuri tips his head back against the door and makes a noise somewhere between a laugh and a groan. ‘Okay, Viktor, I… I don’t know what to say to that.’

‘Say yes,’ Viktor says, and gives up on patience in favour of nuzzling his face right into Yuri’s still-clothed crotch. ‘Tell me I can take these -’ he tugs at the sweats - ‘off and blow you, please, Yuri, I want to so badly.’

‘Yes, of course,’ Yuri says. He’s still staring up instead of at Viktor; he does that, sometimes, when he’s embarrassed, or his composure slips under the weight of all Viktor’s attention on him. Usually, Viktor will sit back and let him come around, let Yuri decide if he wants to take control again and how. Right now, though, he wants to suck Yuri’s dick and not think about anything, so he drags both sweatpants and underwear down in one go. Yuri pushes Viktor’s head back for a moment, so he can fastidiously step out of the puddle of clothing, but then he lets Viktor set the pace.

Viktor doesn’t bother with teasing it out, just goes for taking as much of Yuri’s cock as he can. It’s not elegant, he knows that: but this isn’t about elegance, it’s about filling as many of his senses as he can with Yuri, all at once. Yuri, being the wonderful man he is, or maybe just knowing Viktor well, buries one hand in the hair at the back of Viktor’s neck. He’s not pushing, exactly, but the weight of his hand is comforting. 

At some point he realises Yuri is twitching, stifling urges to buck into Viktor’s mouth. Normally this would be the point that Viktor shifted to holding whoever he was sucking off by the hips - he’s strong enough that most people can thrash around a bit under his hands and not really have much of an effect on his gag reflex. Other athletes, of course, could break his hold if they wanted to, but usually they don’t. Yuri, though. It would take too much explaining right now to convince Yuri that Viktor would really like it if, when Viktor tried to hold him still, Yuri shook him off. He opts for sliding his hands around Yuri’s ass (never a bad thing), pulling him forward a little when he twitches, until he gets the idea and starts rocking forward as Viktor works down his cock, and back when Viktor backs off.

It’s pretty fucking amazing. Especially when Yuri has the brilliant idea of tugging on Viktor’s hair a bit. Fucking hell. Viktor has both his hands on Yuri’s hips, urging him forward, and that’s actually more important than getting himself off, but still. He could use a third hand right now. He realises he’s making whiny little needing noises, as well as all the usual sloppy, drooly, not-quite choking noises.

‘Oh, _fuck_ ,’ Yuri says. ‘Look at you Viktor, fuck.’ He makes an abortive movement like he might be trying to pull back before he comes. Viktor hauls him closer, and Yuri pulls his hair good and hard as he comes. Between that and the sensation of Yuri’s strong ass and thighs shaking under Viktor’s hands, it takes longer than usual for Viktor’s brain to come back online and remember things like how to swallow. He chokes a bit, and no, the sensation is never anything but weird, but fuck, he’s so turned on he can’t care.

‘Viktor, I didn’t mean to pull so hard,’ Yuri is saying. He’s recovered faster than Viktor, which is remarkable: unless Viktor is considerably off in both his fellatory skills and his reading of Yuri’s responses, that was a pretty impressive orgasm. Yuri cradles his face and leans down, then stops, a hand’s breadth away from Viktor’s face. ‘Viktor. Shit. You’re crying. I… I didn’t notice. I’m so sorry!’

‘Not crying,’ Viktor insists. Yuri swipes a tear off his cheek. ‘Oh. That.’ He’s forgetting more and more often that Yuri isn’t actually used to this sort of thing. ‘Physiological reaction,’ Viktor says, touching his jaw. ‘From the gag reflex.’

‘I didn’t mean to make you gag,’ Yuri says, still sounding worried.

‘Wasn’t much,’ Viktor assures him, and drops his head to Yuri’s hip again. ‘And you can pull my hair again, by the way.’

‘Good to know,’ Yuri says, running his fingers gently through said hair. He hums quietly, like he’s thinking about something. Viktor nuzzles into his skin, into the crease of his thigh, trying to drive out the haze of returning thoughts with the smell of Yuri and sex. He’s still hard, and it will really only take a few rough strokes with his own hand. He can come like this, face pressed into Yuri’s body and thinking about nothing else.

Yuri pulls Viktor’s head back by the hair when he realises what Viktor’s doing, though. Viktor goes still, drops his hand away from his crotch, and waits for… something. He’s almost expecting to be reprimanded, and although he’s not entirely sure he likes the idea, it’s compelling.

‘You’re beautiful,’ Yuri tells him. ‘You’re so beautiful, Viktor, I want to watch.’

Viktor swallows, tries to think of a response. Fails.

‘Touch yourself,’ Yuri says, and then, ‘No, first get -’ his voice cracks on the order, like he’s not really sure he can say it - ‘get your cock out for me. Please?’

As if Viktor could say no to that. The problem is, though, that that turns this from Viktor chasing a desperate want - a need - to a show. Yuri tugs on Viktor’s hair again, bending him back a little, and then slips to his knees at Viktor’s side. He pulls on the hair, and leans in and kisses Viktor’s neck, and showers him in a patter of little praises and affections. Yuri loves him and he’s beautiful and Yuri loves him and he’s graceful and elegant and Yuri loves him. Yuri sees him working so hard on his routines and Yuri’s and Yuri loves him. He’s magnificent and Yuri knows he can surprise everyone but not Yuri, Yuri won’t be surprised because Yuri _knows_ Viktor is the best and the most beautiful and Yuri loves him. 

All of this swirls around Viktor’s head, and he sort of wants to scream. Don’t talk about skating when we’re having sex. Or whatever it is we’re having with me jerking off and you biting my neck. Except he doesn’t scream: he whines and bares more of his skin to Yuri’s teeth and jerks himself harder. 

‘Viktor, Viktor,’ Yuri says, fingers skimming over Viktor’s chest. ‘You’re so beautiful, Viktor. I could watch you do this every night forever. Is that weird? I missed this, you know.’ He hesitates. ‘Well, not this exactly. But when we used to… you used to let me hold you while you got yourself off and I loved it, so much. You’re so beautiful.’ Yuri’s breath makes Viktor’s skin come out in goosebumps. Or maybe that’s his orgasm: he is about due for one of those, there’s tension curling tight in his gut. He just feels sort of detached from it. He wishes he could put his face back into Yuri’s crotch. Or his ass. Somewhere where Yuri can’t see him.

‘This is what I’d planned on earlier, you know,’ Yuri says, into his ear. ‘I was going to massage you all over until you felt so good you could barely move and then I was going to hold you and watch you -’ he draws in a sharp breath as Viktor’s whole body spasms - ‘watch you come.’

Viktor’s breath chokes. His body flushes all over and he comes, and the rough breath afterwards doesn’t seem enough. He doubles over, gasping, and shakes harder in the aftermath than he did in the throes of it.

Yuri catches him, slips arms around his chest and pulls him gently backward until he’s lying in Yuri’s lap. That opens out his chest so he can breathe properly, but now he’s crying. 

‘Hey,’ Yuri says, resting one hand on Viktor’s shoulder and the other in his hair. ‘Viktor, darling.’ The _darling_ does it: Viktor goes from quietly weeping into Yuri’s leg to sobbing, and he doesn’t even know why. Yuri, wonderful man, doesn’t bother asking why, just pats him and murmurs vaguely reassuring nonsense.

It’s only when Viktor’s sobs calm down that Yuri asks, ‘Did I do something wrong?’

Viktor shakes his head. He opens his mouth with the full intention of saying something reassuring, and what comes out instead is:

‘What if I really do fuck all this up?’

‘All what?’ Yuri asks. ‘Blowjobs?’

‘No,’ Viktor says, ‘Blowjobs are a perennial skill.’ He doesn’t look up, keeps his face mashed into Yuri’s leg, but now seems as good a time as any to actually talk. ‘Skating. Mine. Yours.’

Yuri leans down and kisses the top of his head. ‘You won’t. You’re holding it together. I’m fine. You’re in amazing shape, and your program’s coming together beautifully.’

‘I don’t… feel fine.’ That costs Viktor a lot to admit.

‘I know, darling,’ Yuri says. ‘It’s okay. I’ll have confidence for you if you can’t.’

It’s almost what Viktor needs to hear. Not that Viktor’s entirely certain what he needs to hear, but that’s almost it.

* * *

It’s somewhere in the middle of the night - the same night as the weird back rubs / blow jobs / crying episode. Viktor had fallen asleep pretty much as soon as Yuri coaxed him, achy and disoriented, into bed. Now he finds himself awake and turning things over and over in his head.

‘Mmph?’ Yuri stirs, kicks once or twice and opens his eyes to look up at Viktor, who’s sitting against the headboard. His hand finds Viktor’s wrist. ‘Everything okay?’

‘Just thinking,’ Viktor says. Yuri kisses his palm, and then evidently decides since he’s awake he might as well go pee. Viktor keeps half an ear on the sound of him running water in the bathroom, and then padding out to the kitchen. He comes back with a glass of water, which he passes to Viktor.

‘Drink,’ he says. ‘I should have got you that before you fell asleep.’

It’s endearing, but also not wrong. The crying sort of dried him out: Viktor’s eyes and mouth feel scratchy even now.

‘What was it you said?’ he asks. ‘About patience?’

‘When?’ Yuri pauses, thinking. ‘When you were blowing me?’

‘No, before that. I said I don’t have your patience, I think, and you said I do.’

‘Oh.’ Yuri snuggles into the pillow again, fingers seeking Viktor’s. ‘I think I said you’re patient _with me_.’

‘Am I?’ 

Viktor can’t actually make out the details of Yuri’s expression but he’d bet any money it’s the You’re An Idiot Viktor Nikiforov one. ‘Yes, you really are.’

‘I spent the whole summer climbing all over you and making outrageous innuendos,’ Viktor points out. ‘I tried to get into your bed the first night I was in Hasetsu.’

Yuri snuffles a laugh, and it says a lot about how far they’ve come that they can laugh about that. ‘To be fair, you arrived under the impression I wanted to be seduced.’ He pauses for a moment. ‘And I sort of did.’

‘Still, not winning any points for patience there.’

‘You stuck around, didn’t you?’ Yuri asks him. He reaches up far enough to trail fingertips across Viktor’s jaw. ‘And you give me… space.’

‘Huh.’ Viktor turns that over in his mind. ‘I don’t think I’m naturally very good at that,’ he says. ‘Not before you.’

‘How old was Makkachin when you got her, again?’ Yuri asks.

‘Makka.. Oh, a year, maybe? I never found out her actual birthday, but she was half-grown and scared of everything.’ Viktor’s heart clenches. He knows she’s happy with the Katsukis, and Mari loves her, but the apartment is only half a home without his dog in it. But then, that’s the point: this is only half his home, now. ‘It took a long time for her to trust me, especially given I kept having to go away for competitions.’

‘Look at her now, though.’ Yuri kisses Viktor’s palm.

‘Yuri, did you just compare yourself to my dog?’ VIktor asks.

‘Makkachin and I have a lot in common,’ Yuri says, apparently utterly serious. ‘You…’ He stops that sentence and starts again. ‘Patience isn’t the same as determination. Stubborn determination is what keeps you in shape, keeps you training when all you seem to do is fall over and bruise things. That’s for when you know what the outcome is and what you have to do to get there. Patience is… different. Being patient with people, and dogs, means you have to let the outcome come to you.’

‘Huh.’ Viktor thinks about that for a long while more, that night. In the morning, when Yuri has the rink, he goes and knocks on Yakov’s door. 

‘What the hell time do you call this?’ Yakov asks him.

‘Forty-five minutes before I know you’ll be meeting Georgi,’ Viktor says. ‘Ergo, you will be awake, but under caffeinated.’ He holds out a paper cup, which contains the nicest take-out coffee to be found in this area at this hour. Yakov grunts, takes it, and lets him into the hall. 

‘What do you want, then?’ Yakov asks.

‘Do you still have the record player?’ Viktor thinks about that for a second. ‘And the records, I guess.’

Yakov looks impassive for a moment, then nods. He takes a sip of the coffee, then heads up the stairs.

‘Well, come on then,’ he says. The upstairs room - part study, part studio, with a desk in one corner and foam mats instead of carpet on the floor - hasn’t changed much. Viktor spent a lot of time here at one point, probably because Yakov knew perfectly well that Viktor couldn’t cook. And maybe because Yakov got lonely, in the years after he and Lillia finally split. 

‘This one, right?’ Yakov says. He holds out a 45 rpm single. ‘1991, peaked at 17 on the UK charts.’

‘Yeah.’ Viktor looks across at the shelves of records, lovingly collected from record stores all over the globe. He’d spent a lot of time going through them. There’s all kinds of things: opera, classical, jazz. Practically everyone who’d headlined the Leningrad Rock Club in the 80s; a lot of Anglophone rock. Even some country music. At first he thought it was that Yakov was old-fashioned, still keeping his mental bank of potential skate pieces in actual vinyl hard copies. But then he’d realised there was stuff in there that would never have seen the light of even an exhibition skate, for one reason or another: politically sensitive, too boring, too weird.

The realisation that Yakov collected these for his own reasons, because he liked them, or because he liked collecting them, had been a bit of a shock to Viktor. Rather like when he’d realised, at about seven years old, that elementary school teachers didn’t live at school. Except his elementary school teachers had never let him see inside their houses, whereas Yakov let him handle - carefully - his vinyl collection. And, given the slightest prompting, would subject Viktor to a mixture of obscure musical facts and reminiscences regarding exactly where and when Yakov acquired the record (and, in some cases, concerning his smugness about getting the record into the USSR despite its inflammatory content).

‘Have you still got _Lies_?’ Viktor asks, and Yakov’s eyes light up. He browses along the shelf for a moment, then produces a record. 

‘Barely counts as an album, this one,’ he says. ‘It’s two EPs smashed together.’

‘Capitalising on the success of _Appetite for Destruction_ and the holiday season,’ Viktor finishes, for him. ‘But it’s got some of their best tracks.’

Yakov holds the record out of Viktor’s reach and narrows his eyes at him. ‘Boy, you better not be thinking of changing _any_ of your pieces. I will have you assassinated. I won’t stop at getting you disendorsed, I mean actual assassination.’

‘Can’t a man listen to music for its own sake?’

‘At this hour of the morning?’ Yakov gives him a Look.

‘Okay, fine, it’s for a thing. But -’ Viktor holds up a hand as Yakov reaches out to take the single off him- ‘I’m not changing. I just need… to think for a bit.’

‘Hrmph,’ Yakov says, but hands him over the G’N’R album. ‘Lock the place up when you’re done.

Viktor puts the Gunners on first. He knows where Yurio gets his taste in exhibition pieces, at least. He ends up on the mats, not exactly dancing, but doing the physical equivalent of doodling on a page. 

Six plays through, he switches to Crowded House, and doesn’t flip the speed setting on the record player over to 45. On the floor, he sketches out rough shapes: the outlines of his program without any of the colour or speed or precision of working on ice. Five or six times through that, he pulls out his computer, copies the file for his short program, and spends ten minutes messing around with the settings.

Yakov, still looking skeptical, agrees to leave Viktor alone after a few runs through his free program. Yuri comes looking for him toward the end of his allotted rink time, and when Viktor comes to the end of another run through his short program, is leaning on the boards watching him.

‘It’s pretty like that,’ he says. ‘You’ll never get the speed for the jumps, though.’

‘Not the point,’ Viktor says. ‘It’s too long at this speed, anyway. It’s…’ He hesitates. ‘Did your dance teachers ever get you to do the thing where they play a piece at reduced speed and you have to slow-motion it?’

Yuri shakes his head.

‘My ballet teachers never liked it much,’ Viktor admits. ‘But Yakov had me do it a lot my debut season. You can’t get the speed for the jumps, so you have to… focus on everything else.’

‘Everything else has never really been my problem’ Yuri says, with his self-deprecating laugh. 

‘I’ve been told my problem was - is? - trying to get to all the showy bits too fast and too soon.’

Yuri looks at him, surprised. ‘Really? You’ve always been so… elegant. Poised.’

‘That’s _after_ months of sweat and tears and Yakov drilling discipline into me,’ Viktor admits. 

Yuri nods. ‘Huh. It never showed.’

‘Isn’t that the whole point, though?’ Viktor asks. ‘We make it look easy.’

There’s a pause, hanging between them, and then Viktor shrugs it off and heads for the exit from the rink. Yuri hands him his skate guards.

‘Viktor?’ Yuri’s hands twitch, in that way they do when he’s just a tiny bit nervous.

‘Yes, love?’ Viktor straightens up, skate guards still in hand.

‘Can you teach me the quad lutz? Whenever you have time.’

Viktor blinks at him for a second. ‘I don’t think your routine needs any renovations, does it?’

Yuri shakes his head. ‘No, not for this season. I just… want something new to work on. For next season, maybe.’ He hesitates again, and says, ‘Or I could challenge Yurio to race me to the loop. He’d beat me, but then he’d teach me.’

Viktor reaches out and pulls a startled Yuri in to kiss him, hard. He loves him so fucking much.

‘Of course I can,’ he says. ‘Lutz, loop, whichever. We can start tonight.’ 

Yuri’s face flushes a little with pleasure.

‘Hey Yuri,’ Viktor says, suddenly confident. ‘I’ve been working on something.’ He skates backwards, turns, laps half the rink to build up speed, and launches into the quad flip. Half loop. Triple flip. He steps out slightly on the landing, but on the other hand, he manages one arm over his head the whole time.

When he turns around, Yuri is beaming at him.

‘Get over here,’ Yuri says, and Viktor goes, and finds himself dragged into a hot, greedy kiss.

* * *

A few days before they depart for the Euros, Yuri and Klementina host a party. Klementina makes food for normal people, and also invites the normal people. Yuri does a remarkable job of coming up with finger-food that more or less fits within a training diet, and invites Viktor’s rink-mates. Even Georgi comes, wearing his least flamboyant suit. Mila comes, and ends up leaving scandalously early with one of Olga’s friends, a young person of unspecified gender and spectacularly sculpted hair. Yurio comes, and brings with him both Yakov and Lillia as his school-authorised after-hours escorts. 

Viktor spends most of the party underneath the table with Alina and a pile of paper. He draws quite a good portrait of Makkachin, which Alina admires solemnly before colouring her in (and, uh, out. And all around) with pink glitter crayon. No one except Georgi seems to find it strange that Viktor spends most of a party at his own house hanging out with a toddler. Yuri brings them supplies of carrot sticks and juice at one point. Yakov tells Viktor it’s nice to see he’s found someone on his own level, and before Viktor can sass him back, Alina climbs out from under the table and presents him with the pink poodle portrait.

‘We drew it together,’ she says.

‘I shall hang it in my study,’ Yakov tells her, straight-faced. Viktor has a horrible feeling he's not joking. The picture is going to sit above the records and under the picture of Yakov and Viktor with Viktor's first World Championship gold. Yakov is going to tell people how proud he is of all Viktor's endeavors. 

‘I like it here,’ Yuri says, to Viktor, when they’re washing up after everyone’s gone.

Viktor’s heart tries to twist and inflate at the same time.

‘You don’t want to… move here, do you?’ he asks.

Yuri looks at him funny. ‘Do you want me to? I will if you really want me to.’ There's a pause, in which Viktor can't find anything to say, and then Yuri shakes his head. ‘But that’s not what I mean: it's just nice. Your friends are nice.’

‘They are,’ Viktor concedes. ‘I’m still looking forward to going home.’

It takes a second or two for Yuri’s face to register that Viktor means Hasetsu. They’ve got tickets (on the same flight; that took some re-arranging) from Stockholm to Narita next week and he’s still surprised about that.

Yuri’s kissing gets dish-suds in Viktor’s hair again.

* * *

In Stockholm, Yakov presents Yuri with a team Russia access pass. His role is apparently ‘consultant’.

‘Only because they haven’t got an official category for _personal minder to Mr Nikiforov_ ,’ Yakov says, glaring at Viktor. And then, his expression visibly softening when he turns to Yuri, ‘Keep him out of trouble, and come to me if he gets _into_ trouble.’

‘Yakov! I’m twenty-eight!’

‘Are you?’ Yakov asks. ‘Well, then. You two can be in charge of chaperoning young Yuri.’ Word had got back to Yakov - and more importantly, to Grandpa Nikolai - about the fangirl ambush in Barcelona. The upshot is, Yurio is banned from wandering around unsupervised in foreign cities. Viktor had been planning on taking him out anyway, but now his show of generosity is completely ruined by Yakov’s mandate.

‘I don’t need babysitting!’ Yurio protests, right on cue.

Yuri pats Yurio on the arm. ‘If you behave, I’ll buy you an ice cream,’ he says. ‘Both of you,’ he adds, with a beatific smile in Viktor’s direction.

‘I like you, boy,’ Yakov says. This is not new news to Viktor, but when Yuri flushes bright red, he realises it _is_ news to Yuri. ‘Next time you’re in Saint Petersburg,’ Yakov adds, ‘make Viktor bring you to dinner. My cooking has never poisoned anyone yet.’

Yuri stammers out some kind of agreement, and Viktor tries not to let his heart flutter right out of his ribcage.

They take Yurio out exploring along with Christophe, which means that Yurio gets, in addition to ice-cream (in January. In Stockholm), the dubious pleasure of Christophe’s non-stop patter of filthy remarks, all of it perfectly honed to make Viktor squirm. Yuri, who is normally embarrassed by anyone even _thinking_ innuendos around him, decides after about the second one that his interest in making Viktor squirm outweighs any sense of appropriateness or reserve he might have, and he and Chris effectively tag-team terrible suggestions and jokes at Viktor’s expense for several hours. Viktor and Yurio bond in their efforts to remain disdainfully aloof from the pair of them.

Viktor has his allotted practice time on the ice. Yakov and Yuri both show up for it, and watch him with surprisingly well-matched impassive faces. He thinks, although it's late in the game, that the short program is holding together at last.

After dinner (raucous, but sober), Viktor gets his arms around Yuri and tries to kiss the living daylights out of him. Yuri goes along with it, but pulls back after not nearly long enough.

‘Wait,’ he says.

Viktor snakes one arm around his waist again, and Yuri disentangles himself. He keeps Viktor’s hand, though, and kisses it with sufficient attention that Viktor knows this isn’t a dismissal. 

‘Will you…’ Yuri stops, and visibly straightens himself up. ‘Kneel for me, Viktor, please.’

‘Where?’

Yuri points to the floor at the end of the bed, and Viktor goes. ‘Wait there,’ Yuri tells him, and then proceeds to putter about the room doing routine things. He picks up Viktor’s discarded socks and folds them away in a bag. He pulls out Viktor’s team jacket and sweats and folds them neatly on the dressing table. He stops to kiss Viktor’s forehead. Next he unpacks his own pyjamas and tucks them under one pillow (Viktor hasn’t bothered with pyjamas since Yuri got to Russia). And then he sits on the end of the bed.

‘Are you okay?’

Viktor nods.

‘You tell me if you’re not,’ Yuri says. Viktor just looks at him, and his lips thin. ‘That’s an order, Viktor. You tell me if you’re not okay. If you’re even slightly uncomfortable or unsure.’

‘Okay.’ Viktor’s met safewords before - and he’s willing to bet Yuri has, if probably in a more theoretical context. This, though, Viktor likes better.

‘Stand up,’ Yuri says, ‘and get undressed.’ Viktor does, and Yuri’s gaze feels prickly all over his skin. ‘Put your clothes away,’ Yuri adds, when Viktor would have kicked them into a corner.

There’s an odd moment when Viktor’s standing there, naked, not exactly aroused, in front of Yuri. He knows he’s attractive to look at; he knows Yuri likes looking at him. But Yuri isn’t looking at him with particularly marked lust right now: he’s just looking.

‘Kneel on the bed,’ Yuri says. That’s a bit of a relief: hard floors the day before competition isn’t a great recipe for Viktor’s knees. He climbs up onto the bed, this bed that is theirs and not-theirs, like so many of the beds they’ve slept in together. Yuri gets up off it, and tells him, again, ‘wait there.’

This time Yuri only steps half a pace away, and peels off his own clothes. He’s neither showy nor hasty about it, and Viktor drinks in the sight of every swathe of skin as it appears. There’s a bruise on Yuri’s side that Viktor sucked into it two days ago. There are bruise marks on his hips from falling on the ice. There are old scars and faint blemishes. 

Yuri touches his own dick, almost absent-mindedly, while he looks at Viktor, and Viktor’s cock reacts pretty enthusiastically to that. 

‘Touch yourself for me,’ Yuri says, and Viktor does. He leans back on one arm, stretching out his torso in a way that he knows looks good, and revels in Yuri’s eyes on him. Yuri watches, and goes from absently fondling himself to stroking his dick with intent.

‘You’re so beautiful,’ Yuri says. ‘I could look at you forever.’

Viktor loves it. He loves it, he loves that Yuri loves watching him, he really does. And yet.

‘I can’t wait to see you on the ice tomorrow,’ Yuri says, and Viktor twitches. He doesn’t say anything, but it must show in his face, because Yuri climbs onto the bed and touches his jaw.

‘Viktor?’ He doesn’t have to repeat the order from before, the ‘you tell me if you’re not okay’. Viktor remembers.

‘Don’t…’ Viktor says.

‘Don’t compliment you?’

‘Don’t talk about skating in bed,’ Viktor says. He can feel his face going hot with shame, and then he remembers an important qualifier. ‘Not mine, anyway. Talk about yours all you like.’

Yuri is quiet for a moment, and then he says, ‘Ohhh,’ in a low quiet tone. He tips Viktor’s face up and kisses him, long and slow and very very careful.

‘I love you,’ Yuri says, and Viktor echoes it back to him. They end up jerking off like that, kneeling in front of each other, Yuri’s free hand in Viktor’s hair, trading kisses until they’re both too breathless.

* * *

Viktor’s free skate is a dream. A perfect, piano-and-harp dream, with a ridiculously showy quad flip-half loop-triple-flip sequence in the middle of it. That’s the biggest show piece, though. He’s switched out the long cantilever for a hydroblade, leaving just the one, the last one that ends up with him coming to stillness on his knees.

It’s not a record-breaking score. It’s not even the best in the competition - that, to Yurio’s disgruntlement, goes to Christophe this time. But it’s his, and the routine is neither melodramatic nor skated with a pole up his ass. It’s less ‘here I am, take me’ and more ‘I’m here; I’ll wait.’

Yuri kneels down at the edge of the rink and puts Viktor’s skate guards on for him. Yakov politely sits on Viktor’s other side in the kiss and cry and refrains from making any kind of commentary, either skating-related or pertaining to the fact that Viktor cuddles up to Yuri while they wait for the scores.

Viktor walks away with a bronze, and Yakov somehow manages to intimidate the press into keeping their obnoxious questions to a minimum. Viktor deflects to Yurio and Chris a lot, and when that fails, goes off on a tangent about how much he’s looking forward to flying back to Japan because he misses his dog.

Afterwards, when they’re alone, Yuri picks up the medal from Viktor’s chest and kisses it almost reverently.

‘It’s not gold,’ Viktor feels bound to point out. Yuri knows that, obviously. But it has to be said.

Yuri raises his eyebrows a little. ‘Did I say I was picky about the colour of _your_ medals?’

‘Um,’ Viktor says, very eloquently. Yuri pushes him backward onto the bed and kneels over him.

‘You are magnificent and captivating,’ Yuri says, voice low. ‘Your programs are beautiful, like I knew they would be. I get to do what I’ve always wanted to do: skate on the same ice as Viktor Nikiforov, the most beautiful man on the ice. And a whole lot of other things I never thought I’d get to do, like this.’ He leans down and kisses Viktor with great enthusiasm. ‘But,’ he goes on, ‘if we’re agreed that I owe you some gold medals, and maybe a world championship or five… well. You’d better get used to some silver and bronze, Mr Nikiforov.’

Fuck. That sends a shiver down Viktor’s spine. Mostly a good shiver, to be fair, but there are things he has to ask.

‘And if I don’t get either of those?’ He puts one finger on Yuri’s lips before he can speak. ‘Or if I _do_ end up with gold?’ This latter is a risky question: Viktor’s next chance at gold would be Worlds, and the safest assumption is that Yurio will take that one if Yuri doesn't. But if by some miracle…

Yuri gives him a positively wicked smile, one that suggest he might actually eat Viktor alive. ‘If you win gold over me,’ he says, ‘I want you on your knees for me wearing nothing _but_ that medal.’

‘And if I win nothing?’

Yuri shrugs. ‘I’ll have you on your knees anyway, and then we get married when I win an international gold medal. Isn't that the deal?’

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For the edification of those who would like to imagine the SP music: Crowded House's 'Fall At Your Feet'. Only in a piano-and-harp cover that doesn't exist. The closest thing would be [Clare Bowditch's cover](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DbTZKxe4m7E), which is a minute and a bit too long. Presumably the custom cover Viktor has is a little faster (Bowditch's version is slower than the original) and cuts out one round of the refrain.
> 
> Both the Bowditch and the Crowded House versions sound really silly slowed to 33 rpm, by the way: I tried. The music is lovely, especially on the Crowded House, but unlike Dolly Parton's Jolene, the vocals are not improved by the slowdown.

**Author's Note:**

> Caveats and comments policy:
> 
> I've tagged things that seem obvious to me to tag. If I've missed something it's not out of malice, but please recognise that I am not a wizard or a mind-reader: I cannot anticipate all possible squicks or triggers. If you aren't willing to take that risk, don't read the fic.
> 
> I adore comments. I do not adore being yelled at because your headcanon clashes with my characterisation choices. If you want to ask me *why* I did what I did, I'm happy to answer. In a similar vein, I'm not here for snide commentary on any character's sexual choices, but I can talk about why if you ask civilly.


End file.
